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HE  STUDY  OF  WORDS 


RICHARD  CHENEVIX  TRENCH,  B.D., 

OF   ITCHENSTOKE,    HANTS  ;   EXAMINING   CHAPLAIN   TO    THE   LORD   BISHOT     ' 
OF   OXFORD  ;   AND   PROFESSOR    OF   DIVINITY,   KING'S   COLLEGE,  LONDON. 


FROM  THE  SECOND  LONDON  EDITION,  REVISED  AND  ENLARGED. 


KEDFIELD, 

110   AND   112  NASSAU    STREET,    NEW    YORK. 

1853. 


[Sixth  Edition.] 


.** 


N^Mp? 

-.- 

&  *•    "  9 

*•  *    *  *»&  *'     '  *    -;! 
PREFACE 


TO 

THE    FIRST    EDITION. 


THESE  lectures  will  not,  I  trust,  be  found  anywhere 
to  have  left  out  of  sight  seriously,  or  for  long,  the 
peculiar  needs  of  those  for  whom  they  were  originally 
intended,  and  to  whpm  they  were  primarily  ad- 
dressed. I  am  conscious  indeed,  here  and  there,  of 
a  certain  departure  from  my  first  intention,  having 
been  in  part  seduced  to  this  by  a  circumstance  which 
I  had  not  in  the  least  contemplated  when  I  obtained 
permission  to  deliver  them,  by  finding,  namely,  that 
I  should  have  other  hearers  besides  the  pupils  of  the 
training  school.  Some  matter  adapted  for  those 
rather  than  for  these  I  was  thus  led  to  introduce  — 
which  afterward  I  was  unwilling  in  preparing  for  the 
press,  to  remove ;  on  the  contrary  adding  to  it  rather, 
in  the  hope  of  obtaining  thus  a  somewhat  wider  cir- 
cle of  readers  than  I  could  have  hoped,  had  I  more 


4:  PREFACE. 

rigidly  restricted  myself  in  the  choice  of  my  materi- 
als. ^Fet  I  should  greatly  regret  to  have  admitted 
so  much  of  this  as  should  deprive  these  lectures  of 
their  fitness  for  those  whose  profit  in  writing  and  in 
publishing  I  had  mainly  in  view,  namely,  schoolmas- 
ters and  those  preparing  to  be  such. 

Had  I  known  any  book  entering  with  any  fullness, 
and  in  a  popular  manner,  into  the  subject-matter  of 
these  pages,  and  making  it  its  exclusive  theme,  I 
might  still  have  delivered  these  lectures,  but  should 
scarcely  have  sought  for  them  a  wider  audience  than 
their  first,  gladly  leaving  the  matter  in  their  hands, 
whose  studies  in  language  had  been  fuller  and  riper 
than  my  own.  But  abundant  and  ready  to  hand,  as 
are  the  materials  for  such  a  book,  I  did  not ;  while 
yet  it  seems  to  me  that  the  subject  is  one  to  which  it 
is  beyond  measure  desirable  that  their  attention,  who 
are  teaching,  or  shall  have  hereafter  to  teach,  others 
should  be  directed  ;  so  that  they  shall  learn  to  regard 
language  as  one  of  the  chiefest  organs  of  their  own 
education  and  that  of  others.  For  I  am  persuaded 
that  I  have  used  no  exaggeration  in  saying,  that  for 
many  a  young  man  "  his  first  discovery  that  words 
are  living  powers,  has  been  like  the  dropping  of  scales 
from  his  eyes,  like  the  acquiring  of  another  sense,  or 
the  introduction  into  a  new  world," — while  yet  all 


PREFACE.  5 

this  may  be  indefinitely  deferred,  may,  indeed, 
never  find  place  at  all,  unless  there  is  some  one  at 
hand  to  help  for  him  and  to  hasten  the  process ;  and 
he  who  so  does,  will  ever  after  be  esteemed  by  him 
as  one  of  his  very  foremost  benefactors.  Whatever 
may  be  Home  Tooke's  shortcomings,  whether  in  oc- 
casional details  of  etymology,  or  in  the  philosophy 
of  grammar,  or  in  matters  more  serious  still,  yet,  with 
all  this,  what  an  epoch  in  many  a  student's  intellec- 
tual life  has  been  his  first  acquaintance  with  The 
Diversions  of  Purley,  And  they  were  not  among 
the  least  of  the  obligations  of  the  young  men  of  our 
time  to  Coleridge,  that  he  so  often  himself  weighed 
words  in  the  balances,  and  so  earnestly  pressed  upon 
all  with  whom  his  voice  went  for  anything,  the  profit 
which  they  would  find  in  so  doing.  Nor,  with  the 
certawity  that  I  am  inticipating  much  in  my  little 
volume,  can  I  refrain  from  quoting  some  words  which 
were  not  present  with  me  during  its  composition,  al- 
though I  must  have  been  familiar  with  them  long 
ago,  words  which  express  excellently  well  why  it  is 
that  these  studies  profit  so  much,  and  which  will  also 
explain  the  motives  which  induced  me  to  add  my 
little  contribution  to  their  furtherance  : — 

"  A  language  will  often  be  wiser,  not  merely  than 
the  vulgar,  but  even  than  the  wisest  of  those  who 


6  PREFACE. 

Bpeak  it.  Being  like  amber  in  its  efficacy  to  circu- 
late the  electric  spirit  of  truth,  it  is  also  like  amber 
in  embalming  and  preserving  the  relics  of  ancient 
wisdom,  although  one  is  not  seldom  puzzled  to  deci- 
pher its  contents.  Sometimes  it  locks  up  truths, 
which  were  once  well  known,  but  which,  in  the  course 
of  ages,  have  passed  out  of  sight  and  been  forgotten. 
In  other  cases  it  holds  the  germs  of  truths,  of  which, 
though  they  were  never  plainly  discerned,  the  genius 
of  its  framers  caught  a  glimpse  in  a  happy  moment 
of  divination.  A  meditative  man  can  not  refrain 
from  wonder,  when  he  digs  down  to  the  deep  thought 
lying  at  the  root  of  many  a  metaphorical  term,  em- 
ployed for  the  designation  of  spiritual  things,  even 
of  those  with  regard  to  which  professing  philosophers 
have  blundered  grossly ;  and  often  it  would  seem  as 
though  rays  of  truths,  which  were  still  below  the  in- 
tellectual horizon,  had  dawned  upon  the  imagination 
as  it  was  looking  up  to  heaven.  Hence  they  who 
feel  an  inward  call  to  teach  and  enlighten  their  coun- 
trymen, should  deem  it  an  important  part  of  their 
duty  to  draw  out  the  stores  of  thought  which  are  al 
ready  latent  in  their  native  language,  to  purify  it 
from  the  corruptions  which  time  brings  upon  all 
things,  and  from  which  language  has  no  exemption, 
and  to  endeavor  to  give  distinctness  and  precision  to 


PREFACE.  7 

whatever   in  it  is  confused,  or  obscure,  or  dimly- 
seen."* 

I  will  only  add,  that  if  I  have  not  owned  one  by 
one  my  obligations  to  each  writer  who  has  helped 
me  here — obligations  which  readers  familiar  with 
the  subject  will  recognise  at  once — this  has  arisen 
from  no  desire  to  escape  the  acknowledgment,  but 
only  from  the  popular  character  of  these  lectures,  in 
which  multiplied  references  would  have  been  plainly 
out  of  place. 

ITCHENSTOKE,  Oct.  9,  1851. 

*  Guesses  a ,  Truth     First  Series,  p.  295. 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION, 

I  HAVE  availed  myself  of  the  opportunities  which 
a  second  edition  has  afforded  me,  for  the  correcting 
of  some  few  errors  in  the  first,  which  either  I  had 
myself  discovered,  or  which  publicly  or  privately  had 
been  pointed  out  to  me.  I  have  also  added  a  sixth 
lecture  to  the  five  which  at  first  composed  this 
series ;  and  by  other  additions,  as  once  or  twice  by 
omission,  have  sought  to  render  this  little  volume 
less  unworthy  of  the  favor  which  it  has  found. 

ITCHENSTOKE,  Feb.  4,  1852. 


ON 

THE  STUDY  OF  WORDS, 


INTRODUCTORY  LECTURE. 

THERE  are  few  who  would  not  readily  acknowledge 
that  in  worthy  books  is  laid  up  and  hoarded  the 
greater  part  of  the  treasures  of  wisdom  and  knowl- 
edge which  the  world  has  accumulated ;  and  that 
chiefly  by  aid  of  these  they  are  handed  down  from 
one  generation  to  another.  My  purpose  in  the  pres- 
ent, and  in  some  succeeding  lectures,  which  by  the 
kindness  of  your  principal,  I  shall  have  the  oppor- 
tunity of  addressing  to  you  here,  is  to  urge  on  you 
something  different  from  this;  namely, Jhat  not  in 
books  only,  which  all  acknowledge,  nor  yet  in  con- 
nected oral  discourse,  but  often  also  in  words  con- 
templated singly,  there  are  boundless  stores  of  moral 
and  historic  truth,  and  no  less  of  passion  and  imagin- 
ation, laid  up — lessons  of  infinite  worth  which  we 
may  derive  from  them,  if  only  our  attention  is  awa- 
kened to  their-  existence.  I  would  urge  on  you,  though 
with  teaching  such  as  you  enjoy,  the  subject  will  not 
be  new  to  you,  how  well  it  will  repay  you  to  study 


10  INTEODTICTOEY  LECTURE. 

the  words  which  you  are  in  the  habit  of  using  or  of 
meeting,  be  they  such  as  relate  to  highest  spiritual 
things,  or  our  common  words  of  the  shop  and  the 
market,  and  all  the  familiar  intercourse  of  life.  It 
will  indeed  repay  you  far  better  than  you  can  easily 
believe.  I  am  sure,  at  least,  that  for  many  a  young 
man  his  first  discovery  of  the  fact  that  words  are 
living  powers,  has  been  like  the  dropping  of  scales 
from  his  eyes,  like  the  acquiring  of  another  sense,  or 
the  introduction  into  a  new  world  ;  he  is  never  able 
to  cease  wondering  at  the  moral  marvels  that  sur- 
round him  on  every  side,  and  ever  reveal  themselves 
more  and  more  to  his  gaze. 

"We  indeed  hear  it  not  seldom  said  that  ignorance 
is  the  mother  of  admiration.  A  falser  word  was 
never  spoken,  and  hardly  a  more  mischievous  one  ; 
for  it  seems  to  imply  that  this  healthiest  exercise  of 
the  mind  rests,  for  the  most  part,  on  a  deceit  and 
illusion  and  that  with  better  knowledge  it  would 
cease.  For  once  that  ignorance  leads  us  to  admire 
that  which  with  fuller  insight  we  should  perceive 
to  be  a  common  thing,  and  one  demanding  therefore 
no  such  tribute  from  us,  a  hundred,  nay,  a  thousand 
times,  it  prevents  us  from  admiring  that  which  is  ad- 
mirable indeed.  This  is  true,  whether  we  are  mov- 
ing in  the  region  of  nature,  which  is  the  region  of 
God's  wonders,  or  even  in  the  region  of  art,  which 
is  the  region  of  man's  wonders ;  and  nowhere  truer 
than  in  this  sphere  and  region  of  language,  which  is 


STUDY   OF  WOBDS   NOT  TEDIOTJ8.  11 

about  to  claim  us  now.  Oftentimes  here  we  move 
up  and  down  in  the  midst  of  intellectual  and  moral 
marvels  with  vacant  eye  and  with  careless  mind, 
even  as  some  traveller  passes  unmoved  over  fields  of 
fame,  or  through  cities  of  ancient  renown — •  unmoved 
because  utterly  unconscious  of  the  great  deeds  which 
there  have  been  wrought,  of  the  great  hearts  which 
spent  themselves  there.  We,  like  him,  wanting  the 
knowledge  and  insight  which  would  have  served  to 
kindle  admiration  in  us,  are  oftentimes  deprived  of 
this  pure  and  elevating  excitement  of  the  mind,  and 
miss  no  less  that  manifold  teaching  and  instruction 
which  ever  lie  about  our  path,  and  nowhere  more 
largely  than  in  our  daily  words,  if  only  we  knew  how  f 
to  put  forth  our  hands  aud  make  it  our  own.  "  What 
riches,"  one  exclaims,  "  lie  hidden  in  the  vulgar 
tongue  of  our  poorest  and  most  ignorant.  What 
flowers  of  paradise  lie  under  our  feet,  with  their  beau- 
ties and  their  parts  undistinguished  and  undiscerned, 
from  having  been  daily  trodden  on." 

And  this  subject  upon  which  we  are  thus  entering 
ought  not  to  be  a  dull  or  uninteresting  one  in  the 
handling,  or  one  to  which  only  by  an  effort  you  will 
yield  the  attention  which  I  shall  claim.  If  it  shall 
prove  so,  this  I  fear  must  be  through  the  fault  of  my 
manner  of  treating  it ;  for  certainly  in  itself  there  is 
no  study  which  may  be  made  at  once  more  instruc- 
tive and  entertaining  than  the  study  of  the  use,  ori- 
gin, and  distinction  of  words,  which  is  exactly  that 

* 


12  INTRODUCTORY   LECTURE. 

which  I  now  propose  to  myself  and  to  you.  I  re- 
member a  very  learned  scholar,  to  whom  we  owe 
one  of  our  best  Greek  lexicons,  a  book  which  must 
have  cost  him  years,  speaking  in  the  preface  to  hia 
great  work  with  a  just  disdain  of  some,  who  com- 
plained of  the  irksome  drudgeiy  of  such  toils  as 
those  which  had  engaged  him  so  long — and  this, 
forsooth,  because  they  only  had  to  do  with  words ; 
who  claimed  pity  for  themselves,  as  though  they  had 
been  so  many  galley-slaves  chained  to  the  oar,  or 
martyrs  who  had  offered  themselves  to  the  good  of 
the  rest  of  the  literary  world.  He  declares  that,  for 
his  part,  the  task  of  classing,  sorting,  grouping,  com- 
paring,-tracing  the  derivation  and  usage  of  words, 
had  been  to  him  no  drudgery,  but  a  delight  and  la- 
bor of  love. 

And  if  this  may  be  true  in  regard  of  a  foreign 
tongue,  how  much  truer  ought  it  to  be  in  regard  of 
our  own,  of  our  "  mother-tongue,"  as  we  fondly  call 
it.  A  great  writer  not  very  long  departed  from  us 
has  here  borne  witness  at  once  to  the  pleasantness 
and  profit  of  this  study.  "  In  a  language,"  he  says, 
"  like  ours,  where  so  many  words  are  derived  from 
other  languages,  there  are  few  modes  of  instruction 
more  useful  or  more  amusing  than  that  of  accustom- 
ing young  people  to  seek  for  the  etymology  or  pri- 
mary meaning  of  the  words  they  use.  There  are 
cases  in  which  more  knowledge  of  more  value  may 


LANGUAGE  FOSSIL  POETRY.  13 

be  conveyed  by  the  history  of  a  word  than  by  the 
history  of  a  campaign." 

And,  implying  the  same  truth,  a  popular  Ameri- 
can author  has  somewhere  characterized  language 
as  "fossil  poetry" — evidently  meaning  that  just  as 
in  some  fossil,  curious  and  beautiful  shapes  of  vegeta- 
ble or  animal  life,  the  graceful  fern  or  the  finely  ver- 
tebrated  lizard,  such  as  now,  it  may  be,  have  been 
extinct  for  thousands  of  years,  are  permanently 
bound  up  with  the  stone,  and  rescued  from  that  per- 
ishing which  would  have  otherwise  been  theirs — so 
in  words  are  beautiful  thoughts  and  images,  the  im- 
agination and  the  feeling  of  past  ages,  of  men  long 
since  in  their  graves,  of  men  whose  very  names 
have  perished,  these,  which  would  s"o  easily  have 
perished  too,  preserved  and  made  safe  for  ever. 
The  phrase  is  a  striking  one ;  the  only  fault  which 
one  might  be  tempted  to  find  with  it  is,  that  it  is  too 
narrow.  Language  may  be,  and  indeed  is,  this 
"  fossil  poetry ;"  but  it  may  be  affirmed  of  it  with 
exactly  the  same  truth  that  it  is  fossil  ethics,  or  fos- 
sil history.  "Words  quite  as  often  and  as  effectually 
embody  facts  of  history,  or  convictions  of  the  moral 
common  sense,  as  of  the  imagination  or  passion  of 
men ;  even  as,  so  far  as  that  moral  sense  may  be  per- 
verted, they  will  bear  witness  and  keep  a  record  of 
that  perversion.  On  all  these  points  I  shall  enter  at 
full  in  after  lectures  ;  but  I  may  give  by  anticipation 
a  specimen  or  two  of  what  I  mean,  to  make  from  the 


14  INTEODUCTOEY  LECTUBE. 

first  my  purpose  and  plan  more  fully  intelligible  to 
all. 

Language,  then,  is  fossil  poetry ;  in  other  words, 
we  are  not  to  look  for  the  poetry  which  a  people  may 
possess  only  in  its  poems,  or  its  poetical  customs, 
traditions,  and  beliefs.  Many  a  single  word  also  is 
itself  a  concentrated  poem,  having  stores  of  poetical 
thought  and  imagery  laid  up  in  it.  Examine  it, 
and  it  will  be  found  to  rest  on  some  deep  analogy 
of  things  .natural  and  things  spiritual;  bringing 
those  to  illustrate  and  to  give  an  abiding  form-  and 
body  to  these.  The  image  may  have  grown  trite 
and  ordinary  now;  perhaps  through  the  help  of 
this  very  word  may  have  become  so  entirely  the 
heritage  of  all,  as  to  seem  little  better  than  a  com- 
monplace ;  yet  not  the  less  he  who  first  discerned  the 
relation,  and  devised  the  new  word  which  should 
express  it,  or  gave  to  an  old,  never  before  but  liter- 
ally used,  this  new  and  figurative  sense,  this  man 
was  in  his  degree  a  poet — a  maker,  that  is,  of 
things  which  were  not  before,  which  would  not  have 
existed,  but  for  him,  or  for  some  other  gifted  with 
equal  powers. 

He  who  spake  first  of  a  "  dilapidated"  fortune, 
what  an  image  must  have  risen  up  before  his  mind's 
eye  of  some  falling  house  or  palace,  stone  detaching 
itself  from  stone,  till  all  had  gradually  sunk  into  des- 
olation and  ruin.  Or  he  who  to  that  Greek  word 
which  signifies  "  that  which  will  endure  to  be  held 


ILIADS   WITHOUT   A   HOMEK.  15 

up  to  and  judged  by  the  sunlight,"  gave  first  its 
ethical  signification  of  "  sincere,"  "  truthful,"  or  as_ 
j  we  sometimes  say,  "  transparent,"  can  we  deny  to 
him  the  poet's  feeling  and  eye  ?  Many  a  man  had 
gazed,  we  may  be  sure,  at  the  jagged  and  indented 
mountain  ridges  of  Spain,  before  one  called  them 
"  sierras"  or  "  saws,"  the  name  by  which  now  they 
are  known,  as  Sierra  Morena,  Sierra  Nevada;  but 
that  man  coined  his  imagination  into  a  word,  which 
will  endure  as  long  as  the  everlasting  hills  which  he 
named. 

"Iliads  without  a  Homer,"  some  one  has  called, 
with  a  little  exaggeration,  the  beautiful  but  anony- 
mous ballad  poetry  of  Spain.  One  may  be  permit- 
ted, perhaps,  to  push  the  exaggeration  a  little  fur- 
ther in  the  same  direction,  and  to  apply  the  phrase 
not  merely  to  a  ballad  but  to  a  word.  Let  me  illus- 
trate that  which  I  have  been  here  saying  somewhat 
more  at  length  by  the  word  "  tribulation."  "We  all 
know  in  a  general  way  that  this  word,  which  occurs 
not  seldom  in  scripture  and  in  the  liturgy,  means 
affliction,  sorrow,  anguish ;  but  it  is  quite  worth  our 
while  to  know  how  it  means  this,  and  to  question  the 
word  a  little  closer.  It  is  derived  from  the  Latin 
"  tribulum" — which  was  the  thrashing  instrument 
or  roller,  whereby  the  Roman  husbandman  separated 
the  com  from  the  husks;  and  "  tribulatio"  in  its 
primary  significance  was  the  act  of  this  separation. 
But  some  Latin  writer  of  the  Christian  church  appro- 


16  INTRODUCTORY   LECTURE. 

priated  the  word  and  image  for  the  setting  forth  of 
a  higher  truth ;  and  sorrow,  distress,  and  adversity, 
being  the  appointed  means  for  the  separating  in  men 
of  their  chaff  from  their  wheat,  of  whatever  in  them  | 
was  light  and  trivial  and  poor  from  the  solid  and  the  \ 
true,  therefore  he   called  these  sorrows  and  griefs  I 
"  tribulations,"  thrashings,  that  is,  of  the  inner  spirit-/ 
ual  man,  without  which  there  could  be  no  fitting^ 
him  for  the  heavenly  gamer.     Now  in  proof  of  what 
I  have  just  now  said,  namely  that  a  single  word  is 
often  a  concentrated  poem,  a  little  grain  of  gold 
capable  of  being  beaten  out  into  a  broad  extent  of 
gold-leaf,  I  will  quote,  in  reference  to  this  very  word 
"  tribulation,"  a  graceful  composition  by  an  early 
English  poet,  which  you  will  at  once  perceive  is  all 
wrapped  up  in  this  word,  being  from  first  to  last 
only  the  expanding  of  the  image  and  thought  which 
this  word  has  implicitly  given : — 

"  Till  from  the  straw,  the  flail,  the  corn  doth  beat, 
Until  the  chaff  be  purged  from  the  wheat, 
Yea,  till  the  mill  the  grains  in  pieces  tear, 
The  richness  of  the  flour  will  scarce  appear. 
So,  till  men's  persons  great  afflictions  touch, 
If  worth  be  found,  their  worth  is  not  so  much, 
Because,  like  wheat  in  straw,  they  have  not  yet 
That  value  which  in  thrashing  they  may  get. 
For  till  the  bruising  flails  of  God's  corrections 
Have  thrashed  out  of  us  our  vain  affections ; 
Till  those  corruptions  which  do  misbecome  us 
Are  by  thy  sacred  Spirit  winnowed  from  us ; 


WOEDS   WITNESSES   OF   MOKAL   TRUTHS.  17 

Until  from  us  the  straw  of  worldly  treasures, 
Till  all  the  dusty  chaff  of  empty  pleasures, 
Y"ea,  till  His  flail  upon  us  He  doth  lay, 
To  thrash  the  husk  of  this  our  flesh  away ; 
And  leave  the  soul  uncovered  ;  nay  yet  more, 
Till  God  shall  make  our  very  spirit  poor, 
We  shall  not  up  to  highest  wealth  aspire ; 
But  then  we  shall ;  and  that  is  my  desire." 

This  deeper  religious  use  of  the  word  "  tribulation" 
was  unknown  to  classical,  that  is  to  heathen  antiqui- 
ty, and  belongs  exclusively  to  the  Christian  writers : 
and  the  fact  that  the  same  deepening  and  elevating 
of  the  use  of  words  recurs  in  a  multitude  of  other, 
and  many  of  them  far  more  striking  instances,  is  one 
well  deserving  to  be  followed  up.  Nothing,  I  think, 
would  more  strongly  bring  before  us  what  a  new 
power  Christianity  was  in  the  world  than  to  compare 
the  meaning  which  so  many  words  possessed  before 
its  rise,  and  the  deeper  meaning  which  they  obtained, 
BO  soon  as  they  were  assumed  by  it  as  the  vehicles  of 
its  life,  the  new  thought  and  feeling  enlarging,  puri- 
fying, and  ennobling  the  very  words  which  they  em- 
ployed. This  is  a  subject  which  I  shall  have  occa- 
sion to  touch  on  more  than  once  in  these  lectures, 
but  is  itself  well  worthy  of,  as  it  would  aiford  ample 
material  for,  a  volume. 

But  it  was  said  just  now  that  words  often  containl 
a  witness  for  great  moral  truths — God  having  im- 
pressed such  a  seal  of  truth  upon  language,  that  men 
are  continually  uttering  deeper  things  than  they 


18  INTRODUCTORY  LECTURE. 

know,  asserting  mighty  principles,  it  may  be  assert- 
ing them  against  themselves,  in  words  that  to  them 
may  seem  nothing  more  than  the  current  coin  of  so- 
ciety. Thus  to  what  grand  moral  purposes  Bishop 
Butler  turns  the  word  "  pastime ;"  how  seldom  is  the 
testimony  which  he  compels  the  world,  out  of  its  own 
use  of  this  word,  to  render  against  itself — obliging 
it  to  own  that  its  amusements  and  pleasures  do  not 
really  satisfy  the  mind  and  fill  it  as  with  the  sense 
of  abiding  and  satisfying  joy  ;*  they  are  only  "  pas- 
time ;"  they  serve  only,  as  this  word  confesses,  to 
pass  away  the  time,  to  prevent  it  from  weighing  an 
intolerable  burden  on  men's  hands ;  all  which  they 
can  do  at  the  best  is  to  prevent  men  from  discover- 
ing and  attending  to  their  own  internal  poverty  and 
dissatisfaction  and  want.  He  might  have  added 
that  there  is  the  same  acknowledgment  in  the  word 
"  diversion,"  which  means  no  more  that  that  which 
diverts  or  turns  us  aside  from  ourselves,  and  in  this 
way  helps  us  to  forget  ourselves  for  a  little.  And 
thus  it  would  appear  that,  even  according  to  the 
world's  own  confession,  all  which  it  proposes  is — not 
to  make  us  happy,  but  a  little  to  prevent  us  from  re- 
membering that  we  are  unhappy,  to  pass  away  our 
time,  to  divert  us  from  ourselves.  "While  on  the 
other  hand  we  declare  that  the  good  which  will  re- 
ally fill  our  souls  and  satisfy  them  to  the  uttermost, 
is  not  in  us,  but  without  us  and  above  us,  in  the 

*  Sermon  xiv.  Upon  the  Love  of  God. 


* 
MISUSE  OF  THE  WOED  RELIGION.  19 

words  which  we  use  to  set  forth  any  transcending 
delight.  Take  three  or  four  of  these  words — "  trans- 
port," "  rapture,"  ravishment," ' "  ecstasy" — "  trans- 
port," that  which  carries  us,  as  "  rapture,"  or  "  rav- 
ishment," that  which  snatches  us,  out  of  and  above 
ourselves ;  and  "  ecstasy"  is  very  nearly  the  same, 
only  drawn  from  the  Greek. 

And  not  less,  where  a  perversion  of  the  moral 
sense  has  found  place,  words  preserve  oftentimes  a 
record  of  this  perversion.  "We  have  a  signal  exam- 
ple of  this,  even  as  it  is  a  notable  evidence  of  the 
manner  in  which  moral  contagion,  spreading  from 
heart  and  manners,  invades  the  popular  language  in 
the  use,  or  rather  misuse  of  the  word  "  religion,"  du- 
ring all  the  ages  of  papal  domination  in  Europe. 
Probably  many  of  you  are  aware  that  in  those  times 
a  "  religious  person"  did  not  mean  any  one  who  felt 
and  allowed  the  bonds  that  bound  him  to  God  and 
to  his  fellow-men,  but  one  who  had  taken  peculiar 
vows  upon  him,  a  member  of  one  of  the  monkish 
orders ;  a  "  religious"  house  did  not  mean,  nor  does 
it  now  mean  in  the  church  of  Borne  a  Christian 
household,  ordered  in  the  fear  of  God,  but  a  house 
in  which  these  persons  were  gathered  together  ac- 
cording to  the  rule  of  some  man,  Benedict,  or  Domi- 
nic or  some  other.  A  "  religion"  meant  not  a  ser- 
vice of  God,  but  an  order  of  monkery ;  and  taking 
the  monastic  vows  was  termed  going  into  a  "  reli- 
gion." Now  what  an  awful  light  does  this  one  word 


20  INTRODUCTORY   LECTURE. 

so  used  throw  on  the  entire  state  of  mind  and  habits 
of  thought  in  those  ages !  That  then  was  "  religion," 
and  nothing  else  was  deserving  of  the  name !  And 
"religious,"  was  a  title  which  might  not  be  given  to 
parents  and  children,  husbands  and  wives,  men  and 
women  fulfilling  faithfully  and  holily  in  the  world 
the  several  duties  of  their  stations,  but  only  to  those- 
who  had  devised  self-chosen  service  for  themselves.* 

In  like  manner  that  "  lewd,"  which  meant  at  one 
time  no  more  than  "lay,"  or  unlearned — the  "lewd" 
people,  the  lay  people — should  come  to  signify  the 
sinful,  the  vicious,  is  not  a  little  worthy  of  note.  How 
forcibly  we  are  reminded  here  of  that  saying  of  the 
Pharisees  of  old  :  "  This  people  which  knoweth  not 
the  law  is  cursed  ;"  how  much  of  their  spirit  must- 
have  been  at  work  before  the  word  could  have  ac- 
quired this  secondary  meaning. 

But  language  is  fossil  history  as  well.  What  a 
record  of  great  social  revolutions,  revolutions  in  na- 
tions and  in  the  feelings  of  nations,  the  one  word 
"  frank"  contains ;  which  is  used,  as  we  all  know,  to 


*  A  reviewer  in  Fraser's  Magazine,  December,  1851,  in  the  main 
a  favorable,  and  always  a  kind  one,  doubts  whether  I  have  not  here 
pushed  my  assertion  too  far.  So  far  from  this  being  the  case,  it  was 
not  merely  "  the  popular  language,"  as  I  have  expressed  myself,  which 
this  corruption  had  invaded,  but  a  decree  of  the  great  Fourth  Later- 
an  Council,  forbidding  the  further  multiplication  of  monastic  orders, 
runs  thus :  Ne  nimia  religionwn  divereitas  gravem  in  Ecclesia  Dei  con- 
fusionem  inducat,  finniter  prohibemus,  ne  quis  de  cetero  novam 
religionem  inveniat,  sed  quicunque  voluerit  ad  religionem  converti, 
unam  de  approbates  assumat 


ORIGIN   OF  THE   WOBD   FRANK.  21 

express  aught  that  is  generous,  straightforward,  and 
free.  The  Franks,  I  need  not  remind  you,  were  a 
powerful  German  tribe,  or  association  of  tribes,  which 
at  the  breaking  up  of  the  Roman  empire  possessed 
themselves  of  Gaul,  to  which  they  gave  their  own 
name.  They  were  the  ruling  conquering  people, 
honorably  distinguished  from  the  Gauls  and  degen- 
erate Romans  among  whom  they  established  them- 
selves by  their  independence,  their  love  of  freedom, 
their  scorn  of  a  lie :  they  had,  in  short,  the  virtues 
which  belong  to  a  conquering  and  dominant  race  in 
the  midst  of  an  inferior  and  conquered  one.  And 
thus  it  came  to  pass  that  by  degrees  the  name 
"  frank,"  which  may  have  originally  indicated  mere- 
ly a  national,  came  to  involve  a  moral  distinction  as 
well;  and  a  "frank"  man  was  synonymous  not 
merely  with  a  man  of  the  conquering  German  race, 
but  was  an  epithet  applied  to  a  person  possessed  of 
certain  high  moral  qualities,  which  for  the  most  part 
appertained  to,  and  were  found  only  in  men  of  that 
stock ;  and  thus  in  men's  daily  discourse,  when  they 
speak  of  a  person  as  being  "  frank,"  or  when  they 
use  the  words  "  franchise,"  "  enfranchisement,"  to 
express  civil  liberties  and  immunities,  their  language 
here  is  the  outgrowth,  the  record,  and  the  result  of 
great  historic  changes,  bears  testimony  to  facts  of 
history,  whereof  it  may  well  happen  that  the  speak- 
ers have  never  heard.  Let  me  suggest  to  you  the 
word  "  slave,"  as  one  which  has  undergone  a  pro- 


22  INTRODUCTORY  LEOTTTRE. 

cess  entirely  analogous,   although  in  an  opposite 
direction.* 

Having  given  by  anticipation  this  handful  of  ex- 
amples in  illustration  of  what  in  these  lectures  I  pro- 
pose, I  will,  before  proceeding  further,  make  a  few 
observations  on  a  subject,  which,  if  we  would  go  at 
all  to  the  root  of  the  matter,  we  can  scarcely  leave 
altogether  untouched — I  mean  the  origin  of  lan- 
guage ;  in  which  yet  we  will  not  entangle  ourselves 
deeper  than  we  need.  There  are,  or  rather  there 
have  been,  two  theories  about  this.  One,  and  that 
which  rather  has  been  than  now  is,  for  few  maintain 
it  still,  would  put  language  on  the  same  level  with 
the  various  arts  and  inventions  with  which  man  has 
gradually  adorned  and  enriched  his  life.  It  would 
make  him  by  degrees  to  have  invented  it,  just  as  he 
might  have  invented  any  of  these,  for  himself ;  and 
from  rude  imperfect  beginnings,  the  inarticulate 
cries  by  which  he  expressed  his  natural  wants,  the 
sounds  by  which  he  sought  to  imitate  the  impression 
of  natural  objects  upon  him,  little  by  little  to  have 
arrived  at  that  wondrous  organ  of  thought  and  feel- 
ing, which  his  language  is  often  to  him  now. 

It  might,  I  think,  be  sufficient  to  object  to  this  ex- 
planation, that  language  would  then  be  an  accident 
of  human  nature  ;  and,  this  being  the  case,  that  we 
certainly  should  somewhere  encounter  tribes  sunken 

*  See  Gibbon's  Decline  mid  Fall,  c.  55. 


THE  SAVAGE  NOT  THE  PRIMITIVE  MAN.  23 

so  low  as  not  to  possess  it ;  even  as  there  is  no  hu- 
man art  or  invention,  though  it  be  as  simple  and  ob- 
vious as  the  preparing  of  food  by  fire,  but  there  are 
those  who  have  fallen  below  its  exercise.  But  with 
language  it  is  not  so.  There  have  never  yet  been 
found  human  beings,  not  the  most  degraded  horde 
of  South  African  bushmen,  or  Papuan  cannibals, 
who  did  not  employ  this  means  of  intercourse  with 
one  another.  But  the  more  decisive  objection  to  this 
view  of  the  matter  is,  that  it  hangs  together  with, 
and  is  indeed  an  essential  part  of  that  theory  of  so- 
ciety, which  is  contradicted  alike  by  every  page  of 
Genesis,  and  every  notice  of  our  actual  experience 
— the  "orang-outang"  theory,  as  it  has2  been  so 
happily  termed — that,  I  mean,  according  to  which 
the  primitive  condition  of  man  was  the  savage  one, 
and  the  savage  himself  the  seed  out  of  which  in  due 
time  the  civilized  man  was  unfolded ;  whereas,  in 
fact,  so  far  from  being  this  living  seed,  he  might 
more  justly  be  considered  as  a  dead  withered  leaf, 
torn  violently  away  from  the  great  trunk  of  human- 
ity, and  with  no  more  power  to  produce  anything 
nobler  than  himself  out  of  himself,  than  that  dead, 
withered  leaf  to  unfold  itself  into  the  oak  of  the 
forest.  So  far  from  being  the  child  with  the  latent 
capacities  of  manhood,  he  is  himself  rather  the  man 
prematurely  aged,  and  decrepit,  and  outworn. 

But  the  true  answer  to  the  inquiry  how  language  ~] 
arose,  is  this,  that  God  gave  man  language,  just  as  / 


24  INTBODTTCTORY   LECTUEE. 

he  gave  him  reason,  and  just  because  he  gave  him 
reason  (for  what  is  man's  word  but  his  reason  com- 
ing forth,  so  that  it  may  behold  itself?)  that  he  gave 
it  to  him,  because  he  could  not  be  man,  that  is  a  so- 
cial being,  without  it.  Yet  this  must  not  be  taken 
to  affirm  that  man  started  at  the  first  furnished  with 
a  full-formed  vocabulary  of  words,  and  as  it  were 
with  his  first  dictionary  and  first  grammar  ready- 

/  made  to  his  hands.  He  did  not  thus  begin  the 
world  with  names,  but  with  the  power  of  naming ; 
for  man  is  not  a  mere  speaking  machine ;  God  did 
not  teach  him  words,  as  one  of  us  teaches  a  parrot, 
from  without ;  but  gave  him  a  capacity,  and  then 
evoked  the  capacity  which  he  gave.  Here,  as  in 
everything  else  that  concerns  the  primitive  constitu- 
tion, the  great  original  institutes  of  humanity,  our 
best  and  truest  lights  are  to  be  gotten  from  the  study 
of  the  first  three  chapters  of  Genesis ;  and  you  will 
observe  that  there  it  is  not  God  who  imposed  the 
first  names  on  the  creatures,  but  Adam — Adam, 
however,  at  the  direct  suggestion  of  his  Creator. 
He  brought  them  all,  we  are  told,  to  Adam,  "  to  see 
what  he  would  call  them,  and  whatsoever  Adam 
called  every  living  creature,  that  was  the  name 
thereof."  (Gen.  ii.  19.)  Here  we  have  the  clearest 
w  \  intimation  of  the  origin,  at  once  divine  and  human, 

\  of  speech ;  while  yet  neither  is  so  brought  forward 
'  as  to  exclude  or  obscure  the  other. 

And  so  far  we  may  concede  a  limited  amount  of 


LANGUAGE   A   DIVINE   CAPACITY.  25 

right  to  those  who  have  held  a  progressive  acquisi- 
tion, on  man's  part,  of  the  power  of  embodying 
thought  in  words.  I  believe  that  we  should  conceive 
the  actual  case  most  truly,  if  we  conceived  this 
power  of  naming  things  and  expressing  their  rela- 
tions, as  one  laid  up  in  the  depths  of  man's  being, 
one  of  the  divine  capacities  with  which  he  was  cre- 
ated :  but  one  (and  in  this  differing  from  those  which 
have  produced  in  various  people  various  arts  of  life), 
which  could  not  remain  dormant  iu  him,  for  man 
could  be  only  man  through  its  exercise ;  which  there- 
fore did  rapidly  bud  and  blossom  out  from  within 
him  at  every  solicitation  from  the  world  without,  or 
from  his  fellow-man;  as  each  object  to  be  named 
appeared  before  his  eyes,  each  relation  of  things  to 
one  another  arose  before  his  mind.  It  was  not  the 
possible  only,  but  the  necessary  emanation  of  the 
spirit  with  which  he  had  been  endowed.  Man 
makes  his  own  language,  but  he  makes  it  as  the  bee 
makes  its  cells,  as  the  bird  its  nest. 

How  this  latent  power  evolved  itself  first,  how 
this  spontaneous  generation  of  language  came  to 
pass,  is  a  mystery,  even  as  every  act  of  creation  is 
of  necessity  such  ;  and  as  a  mystery  all  the  deepest 
inquirers  into  the  subject  are  content  to  leave  it. 
Yet  we  may  perhaps  a  little  help  ourselves  to  the 
realizing  of  what  the  process  was,  and  what  it  was 
not,  if  we  liken  it  to  the  growth  of  a  tree  springing 

2 


* 

*  * 

26  INTKODUCTOKY   LECTUKE. 

*  out  of,  and  unfolding  itself  from  a  root,  and  accord- 
ing to  a  necessary  law — that  root  being  the  divine 
capacity  of  language  with  which  man  was  created, 
that  law  being  the  law  of  highest  reason  with  which 
I    he  was  endowed  :  if  we  liken  it  to  this  rather  than 
/    to  the  rearing  of  a  house,  which  a  man  should  slow- 
ly and  painfully  fashion  for  himself  with  dead  tim- 
bers combined  after  his  own  fancy  and  caprice ;  and 
which  little  by  little  improved  in  shape,  material, 
and  size,  being  first  but  a  log-house,  answering  his 

i   barest  needs,  and  only  after  centuries  of  toil  and 

1  pain  growing  for  his  sons'  sous  into  a  stately  palace 

I  for  pleasure  and  delight. 

Were  it  otherwise,  were  the  savage  the  primitive 
man,  we  should  then  find  savage  tribes  furnished,  it 
might  be,  scantily  enough  with  the  elements  of  speech 
yet  at  the  same  time  with  its  fruitful  beginnings,  its 
vigorous  and  healthful  germs.  But  what  does  their 
language  on  close  inspection  prove  ?  In  every  case 
what  they  are  themselves,  the  remnant  and  rain  of 
a  better  and  a  nobler  past.  Fearful  indeed  is  the 

'  impress  of  degradation  which  is  stamped  on  the  lan- 
guage of  the  savage — more  fearful  perhaps  even 
than  that  which  is  stamped  upon  his  form.  When 
wholly  letting  go  the  truth,  when  long  and  greatly 
sinning  against  light  and  conscience,  a  people  has 
thus  gone  the  downward  way,  lias  been  scattered 
off  by  some  violent  revolution  from  that  portion  of 
.  the  world  which  is  the  seat  of  advance  and  progress, 


LOSS   OF   AN   IMPORTANT   WOKD.  27 

and  driven  to  its  remote  isles  and  further  corners, 
then  as  one  nobler  th ought,  ( one  spiritual  idea  after 
another  has  perished  from  it,  the  words  also  that  ex- 
pressed  these  have  perished  too :  as  a  people  has 
let  go  one  habit  of  civilization  after  another,  the  words 
also  which  those  habits  demanded  have  dropped, 
first  out  of  use,  and  then  out  of  memory,  and  thus 
after  awhile  have  been  wholly  lost. 

Moffat,  in  his  Missionary  Labors  and  Scenes  in 
South  Africa,  gives  us  a  very  remarkable  example 
of  the  disappearing  of  one  of  the  most  significant 
words  from  the  language  of  a  tribe  sinking  ever 
deeper  in  savagery ;  and  with  the  disappearing  of 
the  word  of  course  the  disappearing  as  well  of  the 
great  spiritual  fact  and  truth  whereof  that  word  was 
at  once  the  vehicle  and  the  guardian.  The  Bechu- 
anas,  a  Caffre  tribe,  employed  formerly  the  word 
"  Morimo,"  to  designate  "  Him  that  is  above,"  or 
"  Him  that  is  in  heaven,"  and  attached  to  the  word 
the  notion  of  a  supreme  Divine  Being.  This  word, 
with  the  spiritual  idea  corresponding  to  it,  Moifat 
found  to  have  vanished  from  the  language  of  the 
present  generation,  although  here  and  there  he  could 
meet  with  an  old  man,  scarcely  one  or  two  in  a 
thousand,  who  remembered  in  his  youth  to  have 
heard  speak  of  "  Morimo :"  and  this  word,  once  so 
deeply  significant,  only  survived  now  in  the  spells 
and  charms  of  the  so-called  rain-makers  and  sorcer- 
ers, who  misused  it  to  designate  a  fabulous  ghost,  of 


28  INTRODUCTORY    LECTURE. 

whom  they  told  the  absurdest  and  most  contradic- 
tory things. 

And  as  there  is  no  such  witness  to  the  degrada- 
tion of  the  savage  as  the  brutal  poverty  of  his  lan- 
guage, so  is  there  nothing  that  so  effectually  tends 
to  keep  him  in  the  depths  to  which  he  has  fallen. 
r  You  can  not  impart  to  any  man  more  than  the  words 
1  which  he  understands  either  now  contain,  or  can  be 
*-made  intelligibly  to  him  to  contain.  Language  is 
as  truly  on  one  side  the  limit  and  restraint  of  thought, 
as  on  the  other  side  that  which  feeds  and  unfolds 
it.  Thus  it  is  the  ever-repeated  complaint  of  the  mis- 
sionary that  the  very  terms  are  wholly  or  nearly 
wholly  wanting  in  the  dialect  of  the  savage  whereby 
to  impart  to  him  heavenly  truths,  or  indeed  even  the 
nobler  emotions  of  the  human  heart.  Dobrizhoffer, 
the  Jesuit  missionary,  in  his  curious  History  of  the 
Abipones,  tells  us  that  neither  they  nor  the  Guarin- 
nies,  two  of  the  principal  native  tribes  of  Brazil,  with 
whose  languages  he  was  intimately  acquainted,  pos- 
sessed any  word  which  in  the  least  corresponded  to 
our  "  thanks."  But  what  wonder,  if  the  feeling  of 
gratitude  was  entirely  absent  from  their  hearts,  that 
they  should  not  have  possessed  the  corresponding 
word  in  their  vocabularies  ?  Nay,  how  should  they 
have  had  it  there  ?  And  that  this  is  the  true  expla- 
nation is  plain  from  a  fact  which  the  same  writer  re- 
cords, that  although  inveterate  askers,  they  never 
showed  the  slightest  sense  of  obligation  or  of  grati- ; 


...     THE  LANGUAGE   OF  SAVAGES.  29 

tude,  when  they  obtained  what  they  sought ;  never 
saying  more  than,  "  This  will  be  useful  to  me,"  or, 
"  This  is  what  I  wanted." 

Nor  is  it  only  in  what  they  have  forfeited  and  lost, 
but  also  in  what  they  have  retained  or  invented, 
that  these  languages  proclaim  their  degradation  and 
debasement,  and  how  deeply  they  and  those  that 
speak  them  have  fallen.  Thus  I  have  read  of  a  tribe 
in  New  Holland,  which  has  no  word  to  signify  God, 
but  has  a  word  to  designate  a  process  by  which  an 
unborn  child  is  destroyed  in  the  bosom  of  its  mother. 
And  I  have  been  informed,  on  the  authority  of  one 
excellently  capable  of  knowing,  an  English  scholar 
long  resident  in  Van  Diemen's  Land,  that  in  the  na- 
tive language  of  that  island  there  are  four  words  to 
express  the  taking  of  human  life — one  to  express  a 
father's  killing  of  a  son,  another  a  son's  killing  of  a 
father,  with  other  varieties  of  murder ;  and  that  in 
no  one  of  these  lies  the  slightest  moral  reprobation, 
or  sense  of  the  deep-lying  distinction  between  to 
kill  and  to  murder ;  while  at  the  same  time,  of  that 
language  so  richly  and  so  fearfully  provided  with  ex- 
pressions from  this  extremest  utterance  of  hate,  he 
also  reports  that  any  word  for  love  is  wanting  in  it 
altogether. 

Yet  with  all  this,  ever  and  anon  in  the  midst  of  « 
this  wreck  and  ruin  there  is  that  in  the  language  of 
the  savage,  some  subtle  distinction,  some  curious  al- 
lusion to  a  perished  civilization,  now  utterly  unintel- 


30  INTKODTJCTOBY  LECTUKE. 

ligible  to  the  speaker,  or  some  other  note,  which  pro- 
claims his  language  to  be  the  remains  of  a  dissipated 
inheritance,  the  rags  and  remnants  of  a  robe  which 
was  a  royal  one  once.  The  fragments  of  a  broken 
sceptre  are  in  his  hand,  a  sceptre  wherewith  once  he 
held  dominion  (that  is,  in  his  progenitors)  over  large 
kingdoms  of  thought,  which  now  have  escaped  wholly 
I  from  his  sway. 

But  while  it  is  thus  with  him,  while  this  is  the 
downward  course  of  all  those  that  have  chosen  the 
downward  path,  while  with  every  impoverishing  and 
debasing  of  personal  or  national  life  there  goes  hand 
in  hand  a  corresponding  impoverishment  and  debase- 
ment of  language,  so  on  the  contrary,  where  there  is 
advance  and  progress,  where  a  divine  idea  is  in  any 
measure  realizing  itself  in  a  people,  where  they  are 
learning  more  accurately  to  define  and  distinguish, 
more  trnly  to  know,  where  they  are  ruling,  as  men 
ought  to  rule,  over  nature,  and  making  her  to  give 
up  her  secrets  to  them,  where  new  thoughts  are  ri- 
sing up  over  the  horizon  of  a  nation's  mind,  new  feel- 
ings are  stirring  at  a  nation's  heart,  new  facts  coming 
within  the  sphere  of  its  knowledge,  there  language 
is  growing  and  advancing  too.  It  can  not  lag  behind ; 
for  man  feels  that  nothing  is  properly  his  own,  that 
he  has  not  secured  any  new  thought,  or  entered  upon 
any  new  spiritual  inheritance,  till  he  has  fixed  it  in 
language,  till  he  can  contemplate  it,  not  as  himself, 
but  as  his  word ;  he  is  conscious  that  he  must  express 


WOKDS   GUAKDLOTS   OF  THOTTGHTS.  31 

truth,  if  he  is  to  preserve  it,  and  still  more  if  he  would 
propagate  it  among  others.  "  Names,'*  as  it  has 
been  excellently  said,  "  are  impressions  of  sense,  and 
as  such  take  the  strongest  hold  upon  the  mind,  and 
of  all  other  impressions  can  be  most  easily  recalled 
and  retained  in  view.  They  therefore  serve  to  give 
a  point  of  attachment  to  all  the  more  volatile  objects 
of  thought  and  feeling.  Impressions  that  when  past 
might  be  dissipated  for  ever,  are  by  their  connection 
with  language  always  within  reach.  Thoughts,  of 
themselves,  are  perpetually  slipping  out  of  the  field 
of  immediate  mental  vision ;  but  the  name  abides 
with  us,  and  the  utterance  of  it  restores  them  in  a 
moment."  And  on  the  necessity  of  names  for  the 
propagation  of  the  truth  it  has  been  well  observed  : 
"Hardly  any  original  thought  on  mental  or  social 
subjects  ever  make  their  way  among  mankind,  or 
assume  their  proper  importance  in  the  minds  even 
of  their  inventors,  until  aptly  selected  words  or 
phrases  have  as  it  were  nailed  them  down  and  held 
them  fast." 

Nor  does  what  has  here  been  said  of  the  manner! 
in  which  language  enriches  itself  contradict  a  prior 
assertion  that  man  starts  with  language  as  God's  per- 
fect gift,  which  he  only  impairs  and  forfeits  by  sloth 
and  sin,  according  to  the  same  law  which  holds  good 
in  respect  of  each  other  of  the  gifts  of  Heaven.  Foi 
it  was  not  meant,  as  indeed  was  then  observed,  that 
men  would  possess  words  to  set  forth  feelings  which 


32  INTRODUCTORY   LECTURE. 

were  not  yet  stirring  in  them,  combinations  which 
they  had  not  yet  made,  objects  which  they  had  not 
yet  seen,  relations  of  which  they  were  not  yet  con- 
scious ;  but  that  up  to  his  needs  (those  needs  inclu- 
ding not  merely  his  animal  wants,  but  all  his  higher  < 
spiritual  cravings),  he  would  find  utterance  freely^' 
The  great  logical,  or  grammatical  framework  of  lan- 
guage (for  grammar  is  the  logic  of  speech,  even  as 
logic  is  the  grammar  of  reason),  he  would  possess,  ho 
knew  not  how ;  and  certainly  not  as  the  final  result 
of  gradual  acquisitions,  but  as  that  rather  which  alone 
had  made  those  acquisitions  possible ;  as  that  accord- 
ing to  which  he  unconsciously  worked,  filling  in  this 
framework  by  degrees  with  these  later  acquisitions 
of  thought,  feeling,  and  experience,  as  one  by  one 
they  arrayed  themselves  in  the  garment  and  vesture 
of  words. 

Here  then  is  the  explanation  of  the  fact  that  lan- 
guage should  be  thus  instructive  for  us,  that  it  should 
yield  us  so  much,  when  we  come  to  analyze  and 
probe  it ;  and  the  more,  the  more  deeply  and  accu- 
rately we  do  so.  It  is  full  of  instruction,  because  it 
is  the  embodiment,  the  incarnation,  if  I  may  so  speak, 
of  the  feelings  and  thoughts  and  experiences  of  a 
nation,  yea,  often  of  many  nations,  and  of  all  which 
through  centuries  they  have  attained  to  and  won. 
It  stands  like  the  pillars  of  Hercules,  to  mark  how 
far  the  moral  and  intellectual  conquests  of  mankind 
have  advanced,  only  not  like  those  pillars,  fixed  and 


WORDS  PROPAGATE  THOUGHTS.         33 

immovable,  but  ever  itself  advancing  with  the  prog- 
ress of  these;  nay  more — itself  a  great  element  of 
that  advance ;  for  "  language  is  the  armory  of  the 
human  mind,  and  at  once  contains  the  trophies  of 
its  past  and  the  weapons  of  its  future  conquests." 
The  mighty  moral  instincts  which  have  been  work- 
ing in  the  popular  mind,  have  found  therein  their 
unconscious  voice;  and  the  single  kinglier  spirits 
that  have  looked  deeper  into  the  heart  of  things,  have 
oftentimes  gathered  up  all  they  have  seen  into  some 
one  word,  which  they  have  launched  upon  the  world, 
and  with  which  they  have  enriched  it  for  ever — ma- 
king in  that  new  word  a  new  region  of  thought  to  be 
henceforward  in  some  sort  the  common  heritage  of 
all.  Language  is  the  amber  in  which  a  thousand* 
precious  and  subtle  thoughts  have  been  safely  em- 
bedded and  preserved.  It  has  arrested  ten  thousand 
lightning  flashes  of  genius,  which,  unless  thus  fixed 
and  arrested,  might  have  been  as  bright,  but  would 
have  also  been  as  quickly  passing  and  perishing,  as 
the  lightning.  "  Words  convey  the  mental  treasures  1 
of  one  period  to  the  generations  that  follow ;  and  laden 
with  this,  their  precious  freight,  they  sail  safely  across 
gulfs  of  time  in  which  empires  have  suffered  ship- 
wreck, and  the  languages  of  common  life  have  sunk 
into  oblivion."  And  for  all  these  reasons  far  more 
and  mightier  in  every  way  is  a  language  than  any 
one  of  the  works  which  may  have  been  composed  in 
it.  For  that  work,  great  as  it  may  be,  is  but  the 
2* 


INTRODUCTORY  LECTURE. 


embodying  of  the  mind  of  a  single  man,  this  of  a  na- 
tion. The  Iliad  is  great,  yet  not  so  great  in  strength 
or  power  or  beauty  as  the  Greek  language.  Para- 
dise Lost  is  a  noble  possession  for  a  people  to  have 
inherited,  but  the  English  tongue  is  a  nobler  heritage 
yet. 

Great  then  will  be' our  gains,  if,  having  these  treas- 
ures of  wisdom  and  -knowledge  lying  round  about  us 
so  far  more  precious  than  mines  of  California  gold,  we 
determine  that  we  will  make  what  portion  of  them 
we  can  our  own,  that  we  will  ask  the  words  we  use  to 
give  an  account  of  themselves,  to  say  whence  they 
'are,  and  whither  they  tend.  Then  shall  we  often  rub 
off  the  dust  and  rust  from  what  seemed  but  a  com- 
mon token,  which  we  had  taken  and  given  a  thousand 
times,  esteeming  it  no  better,  but  which  now  we  shall 
perceive  to  be  a  precious  coin,  bearing  the  "  image 
and  superscription"  of  the  great  king ;  then  shall  we 
often  stand  in  surprise  and  in  something  of  shame, 
while  we  behold  the  great  spiritual  realities  which 
underlie  our  common  speech,  the  marvellous  truths 
which  we  have  been  witnessing/br  in  our  words,  but, 
,it  may  be,  witnessing  against  in  our  lives.  And  as 
you  will  not  find,  for  so  I  venture  to  promise,  that 
this  study  of  words  will  be  a  dull  one  when  you  un- 
dertake it  yourselves,  as  little  need  you  fear  that  it 
will  prove  dull  and  unattractive,  when  you  seek  to 
make  your  own  gains  herein  the  gains  also  of  those 
who  may  be  hereafter  committed  to  your  charge. 


CHILDEEN   INTERESTED   IN   WOKDS.  35 

Only  try  your  pupils,  and  mark  the  kindling  of  the 
eye,  the  lighting  up  of  the  countenance,  the  revival 
of  the  flagging  attention,  with  which  the  humblest 
lecture  upon  words,  and  on  the  words  especially 
which  they  are  daily  using,  which  are  familiar  to 
them  in  their  play  or  at  their  church,  will  be  wel- 
comed by  them.  There  is  a  sense  of  reality  abouHl 
children  which  makes  them  rejoice  to  discover  that 
there  is  also  a  reality  about  words,  that  they  are  not 
merely  arbitrary  signs,  but  living  powers;  that,  to 
reverse  the  words  of  one  of  England's  "  false  proph- 
ets," they  may  be  the  fool's  counters,  but  are  the 
wise  man's  money ;  not  like  the  sands  of  the  sea,  in- 
numerable disconnected  atoms,  but  growing  out  of 
roots,  clustering  in  families,  connecting  and  inter- 
twining themselves  with  all  that  men  have  been  do- 
ing and  thinking  and  feeling  from  the  beginning  of 
the  world  till  now.  >.>2  _ 4 

And  it  is  of  course  our  English  tongue,  out  of  which 
mainly  we  should  seek  to  draw  some  of  the  hid  treas- 
ures which  it  contains,  from  which  we  should  en- 
deavor to  remove  the  veil  which  custom  and  famil- 
iarity have  thrown  over  it.  We  can  not  employ  our- 
selves better.  There  is  nothing  that  will  more  help 
to  form  an  English  heart  in  ourselves  and  in  others 
than  will  this.  We  could  scarcely  have  a  single  les- 
son on  the  growth  of  our  English  tongue,  we  could 
scarcely  follow  up  one  of  its  significant  words,  with- 
out having  unawares  a  lesson  in  English  history  as 


36  INTRODUCTORY   LECTURE. 

y 

well,  without  not  merely  falling  on  some  curious  fact 
illustrative  of  our  national  life,  but  learning  also  how 
the  great  heart  which  is  beating  at  the  centre  of  that 
life  was  gradually  shaped  and  moulded.  "We  should 
thus  grow  too  in  our  feeling  of  connection  with 
the  past,  of  gratitude  and  reverence  to  it;  we 
should  estimate  more  truly,  and  therefore  more  high- 
ly, what  it  has  done  for  us,  all  that  it  has  bequeathed 
us,  all  that  it  has  made  ready  to  our  hands.  It  was 
something  for  the  children  of  Israel  when  they  came 
into  Canaan,  to  enter  upon  wells  which  they  digged 
not,  and  vineyards  which  they  had  not  planted,  and 
houses  which  they  had  not  built;  but  how  much 
greater  a  b%oon,  how  much  more  glorious  a  preroga- 
tive, for  any  one  generation  to  enter  upon  the  inher- 
itance of  a  language,  which  other  generations  by  their 
truth  and  toil  have  made  already  a  receptacle  of 
-  choicest  treasures,  a  storehouse  of  so  much  uncon- 
scious wisdom,  a  fit  organ  for  expressing  the  subtlest 
distinctions,  the  tenderest  sentiments,  the  largest 
thoughts,  and  the  loftiest  imaginations,  which  at  any 
time  the  heart  of  men  can  conceive.  And  that  those 
who  have  preceded  us  have  gone  far  to  accomplish 
this  for  us,  I  shall  rejoice  if  I  am  able  in  any  degree 
to  make  you  feel  in  the  lectures  which  will  follow 
the  present. 


LECTURE   II. 

ON   THE    MOKALITY   IN"   WORDS. 

Is  man  of  a  divine  birth  and  stock  ?  coming  from 
God,  and,  when  he  fulfils  the  law  and  intention  of 
his-  creation,  returning  to  him  again  ?  "We  need  no 
more  than  his  language  to  prove  it.  So  much  is 
there  in  that  which  could  never  have  existed  on  any 
other  supposition.  How  else  could  all  those  words 
which  testify  of  his  relation  to  God,  and  of  his  con- 
sciousness of  this  relation,  and  which  ground  them- 
selves thereon,  have  found  their  way  into  this,  the 
veritable  transcript  of  his  innermost  life,  the  genuine 
utterance  of  the  faith  and  hope  which  is  in  him? 
On  no  other  theory  than  this  could  we  explain  that 
great  and  preponderating  weight  thrown  into  the 
scale  of  goodness  and  truth,  which,  despite  of  all  in 
the  other  scale,  we  must  needs  acknowledge  in  every 
language  to  be  there.  How  else  shall  we  account 
for  that  sympathy  with  the  right,  that  testimony 
against  the  wrong,  which,  despite  of  all  its  aberra- 
tions and  perversions,  is  yet  its  prevailing  ground- 
tone? 

But  has  man  fallen,  and  deeply  fallen,  from  the  "I 


38  THE  MORALITY   IN   WORDS. 

heights  of  his  original  creation  ?  We  need  no  more 
than  his  language  to  prove  it.  Like  everything  else 
about  him,  it  bears  at  once  the  stamp  of  his  great- 
ness and  of  his  degradation,  of  his  glory  and  of  his  / 
shame.  "What  dark  and  sombre  threads  he  must 
have  woven  into  the  tissue  of  his  life,  before  we 
could  trace  such  dark  ones  running  through  the  tis- 
,sue  of  his  language !  What  facts  of  wickedness  and 
wo  must  have  existed  in  the  first,  ere  there  could 
be  such  words  to  designate  these  as  are  found  in  the 
last.  There  have  been  always  those  who  have  sought 
to  make  light  of  the  hurts  which  man  has  inflicted 
on  himself,  of  the  sickness  with  which  he  is  sick ; 
who  would  fain  persuade  themselves  and  others  that 
moralists  and  divines,  if  they  have  not  quite  invented, 
have  yet  enormously  exaggerated,  these.  But  are 
these  statements  found  only  in  scripture  and  in  ser- 
mons? Are  there  not  mournful  corroborations  of 
their  truth  imprinted  deeply  upon  every  region  of 
man's  natural  and  spiritual  life,  and  on  none  more 
deeply  than  on  his  language?  It  needs  no  more 
than  to  open  a  dictionary,  and  to  cast  our  eye 
thoughtfully  down  a  few  columns,  and  we  shall  find 
abundant  confirmation  of  this  sadder  and  sterner 
estimate  of  man's  moral  and  spiritual  condition. 
How  else  shall  we  explain  this  long  catalogue  of 
words,  having  all  to  do  with  sin,  or  with  sorrow,  or 
with  both?  How  came  they  there?  We  may  be 
quite  sure  that  they  were  not  invented  without  being 

"•* 


TOKENS   OF  SIN  IN  LANGUAGE.  39 

needed,  that  they  have  each  a  correlative  in  the 
world  of  realities.  I  open  the  first  letter  of  the  al- 
phabet ;  what  means  this  "  ah,"  this  "  alas,"  these 
deep  and  long-drawn  sighs  of  humanity,  which  at 
once  we  encounter  there  ?  And  then  presently  fol- 
low words  such  as  these:  "affliction,"  "agony," 
"anguish,"  "' assassin,"  "atheist"  "avarice,"  and 
twenty  more — words,  you  will  observe,  for  the  most 
part  not  laid  up  in  the  recesses  of  the  language,  to 
be  drawn  forth  and  used  at  rare  opportunities,  but 
occupying  many  of  them  its  foremost  ranks.  And 
indeed,  as  regards  abundance,  it  is  a  melancholy 
thing  to  observe  how  much  richer  is  every  vocabu- 
lary in  words  that  set  forth  sins,  than  in  those  that 
set  forth  graces.  When  St.  Paul  (Gal.  v.  19-23) 
would  put  these  against  those,  "  the  works  of  the 
flesh"  against  "  the  fruit  of  the  Spirit,"  those  are 
seventeen,  these  only  nine;  and  where  do  we  find 
in  scripture  such  lists  of  graces,  as  we  do  at  2  Tim. 
iii.  2,  Horn.  i.  29-31,  of  their  opposites? 

Nor  can  I  help  taking  note,  in  the  oversight  and 
muster  from  this  point  of  view  of  the  w*ords  which 
constitute  a  language,  of  the  manner  in  which  it  has 
been  put  to  all  its  resources  that  so  it  may  express 
the  infinite  varieties,  now  of  human  suffering,  now 
of  human  sin.  Thus  what  a  fearful  thing  is  it  that 
any  language  should  have  a  word  expressive  of  the 
pleasure  which  men  feel  at  the  calamities  of  others  ; 
for  the  existence  of  the  word  bears  testimony  to  the 


40  THE   MORALITY   IN   WORDS. 

existence  of  the  thing.  And  jet  in  more  than  one 
such  a  word  is  found.*  Nor  are  there  wanting,  I  sup- 
pose, in  any  language,  words  which  are  the  mourn- 
ful record  of  the  strange  wickednesses  which  the 
genius  of  man,  so  fertile  in  evil  has  invented. 

And  our  dictionaries,  while  they  tell  us  much,  yet 
will  not  tell  us  all.  How  shamefully  rich  is  the  lan- 
guage of  the  vulgar  everywhere  in  words  which  are 
not  allowed  to  find  their  way  into  books,  yet  which 
live  as  a  sinful  oral  tradition  on  the  lips  of  men,  to 
set  forth  that  which  is  unholy  and  impure.  And  of 
these  words,  as  no  less  of  those  which  have  to  do 
with  the  kindred  sins  of  revelling  and  excess,  how 
many  set  the  evil  forth  with  an  evident  sympathy 
and  approbation,  as  taking  part  with  the  sin  against 
Him  who  has  forbidden  it  under  pain  of  his  extre- 
mest  displeasure.  How  much  wit,  how  much  talent, 
yea,  how  much  imagination  must  have  stood  in  the 
service  of  sin,  before  it  could  have  a  nomenclature 
so  rich,  so  varied,  and  often  so  Heaven-defying  as  it 
has. 

How  ma*ny  words  men  have  dragged  downward 
with  themselves,  and  made  partakers  more  or  less 
of  their  own  fall.  Having  originally  an  honorable 
significance,  they  have  yet,  with  the  deterioration 


*  In  the  Greek,  im^aiptxania,  in  the  German,  "Schadenfreude." 
Cicero  so  strongly  feels  that  such  a  "word  is  wanting,  that  he  gives  to 
"  malevolentia"  the  same  significance,  "  voluptas  ex  malo  altering," 
though  it  lies  not  of  necessity  in  the  word. 


THE   DEGENERATION   OF   WOHD8.  4:1 

and  degeneration  of  those  that  used  them,  deteriora- 
ted and  degenerated  too.  What  a  multitude  of  words 
originally  harmless,  have  assumed  a  harmful  as 
their  secondary  meaning ;  how  many  worthy  have 
acquired  an  unworthy.  Thus  "  knave"  meant  once 
no  more  than  lad  (nor  does  it  now  in  German  mean 
more),  "villain"  than  peasant;  a  "boor"  was  only  a 
farmer,  a  "  varlet"  was  but  a  serving-man,  a  "churl" 
but  a  strong  fellow.  "  Time-server"  was  used  two 
hundred  years  ago  quite  as  often  for  one  in  an  hon- 
orable as  in  a  dishonorable  sense  "  serving  the  time."* 
"  Conceits"  had  once  nothing  conceited  in  them ; 
"  officious"  had  reference  to  offices  of  kindness  and 
not  of  busy  meddling ;  "  moody"  was  that  which 
pertained  to  a  man's  mood,  without  any  gloom  or 
sullenness  implied.  "  Demure"  (which  is,  "  dea 
moeurs,"  of  good  manners),  conveyed  no  hint,  as  it 
does  now,  of  an  over-doing  of  the  outward  demon- 
strations of  modesty.  In  "  crafty"  and  "  cunning" 
there  was  nothing  of  crooked  wisdom  implied,  but 
only  knowledge  and  skill ;  "  craft,"  indeed,  still  re- 
tains very  often  its  more  honorable  use,  a  man's 
"  craft"  being  his  skill,  and  then  the  trade  in  which 
he  is  well  skilled.  And  think  you  that  the  Mag- 
dalen could  have  ever  given  us  "maudlin"  in  its 
present  contemptuous  application,  if  the  tears  of 
penitential  weeping  had  been  held  in  due  honor  in 
the  world  ?  "  Tinsel,"  from  the  French  "  etincelle," 
*  See  in  proof  Fuller's  Holy  State,  b.  iii.  c.  19. 


42  THE  MORALITY   IN  WORDS. 

meant  once  anything  that  sparkles  or  glistens ;  thus 
"  cloth  of  tinsel"  would  be  cloth  inwrought  with  sil- 
ver and  gold ;  but  the  sad  experience  that  "  all  is 
not  gold  that  glitters,"  that  much  which  shows  fair 
and  specious  to  the  eye  is  yet  worthless  in  reality, 
has  caused  the  word  imperceptibly  to  assume  the 
meaning  which  it  now  has,  and  when  we  speak  of 
"  tinsel,"  either  literally  or  figuratively,  we  always 
mean  now  that  which  has  no  reality  of  sterling 
worth  underlying  the  glittering  and  specious  shows 
which  it  makes.  "Tawdry,"  which  is  a  word  of 
curious  derivation,  though  I  will  not  pause  to  go 
into  it,  has  undergone  exactly  the  same  process;  it 
once  conveyed  no  intimation  of  mean  finery,  or 
shabby  splendor,  as  now  it  does. 

A  like  deterioration  through  use  may  be  traced  in 
the  word  "  to  resent."  It  was  not  very  long  ago  that 
Barrow  could  speak  of  the  good  man  as  a  faithful 
"  resenter"  and  requiter  of  benefits,  of  the  duty  of 
testifying  an  affectionate  "resentment"  of  our  obliga- 
tions to  God.  But,  alas !  the  memory  of  benefits 
fades  and  fails  from  us  so  much  more  quickly  than 
that  of  injuries ;  that  which  we  afterward  remember 
and  revolve  in  our  minds  is  so  much  more  predomi- 
nantly the  wrongs  real  or  imaginary  which  men  have 
done  us,  than  the  favors  they  have  bestowed  on  us, 
that  "  to  resent"  in  our  modern  English  has  come  to 
be  confined  entirely  to  that  deep  reflective  displeas- 
ure which  men  entertain  against  those  that  have 


" 


AOTMOSITT,   PKEJTJDIOE.  43 

done,  or  whom  they  believe  to  have  done,  them  a 
wrong.  And  this  leads  us  to  inquire  how  it  comes 
to  pass  that  we  do  not  speak  of  the  "  retaliation"  of 
benefits,  as  often  as  the  "retaliation"  of  injuries? 
The  word  does  but  signify  the  again  rendering  as 
much  as  we  have  received  ;  but  this  is  so  much 
seldomer  thought  of  in  regard  of  benefits  than  of 
wrongs,  that  the  word,  though  not  altogether  unused 
in  this  its  worthier  sense,  has  yet  a  strange  and 
somewhat  unusual  sound  in  our  ears  when  so  em- 
ployed. Were  we  to  speak  of  a  man  "  retaliating" 
kindnesses,  I  am  not  sure  that  every  one  would  un- 
derstand us. 

Neither  is  it  altogether  satisfactory  to  take  note 
that  "  animosity,"  according  to  its  derivation,  means 
no  more  than  "  spiritedness ;"  that  in  the  first  use 
of  the  word  in  the  later  Latin  to  which  it  belongs, 
it  was  employed  in  this  sense ;  was  applied,  for  in- 
stance, to  the  spirit  and  fiery  courage  of  the  horse ; 
but  that  now  it  is  applied  to  only  one  kind  of  vigor 
and  activity,  that  namely  which  is  displayed  in  en- 
mity and  hate,  and  expresses  a  spiritedness  in  these. 
Does  not  this  look  too  much  as  if  these  oftenest 
stirred  men  to  a  lively  and  vigorous  activity? 

And  then  what  a  mournful  witness  for  the  hard 
and  unrighteous  judgments  we  habitually  form  of 
one  another  lies  in  the  word  "  prejudice."  The  word 
of  itself  means  plainly  no  more  than  "  a  judgment 
formed  beforehand,"  without  affirming  anything  as 


44  THE   MORALITY   IN   WOEDS. 

to  whether  that  judgment  be  favorable  or  unfavora- 
ble to  the  person  about  whom  it  is  formed.  Yet  so 
predominantly  do  we  form  harsh,  unfavorable  judg- 
ments of  others  before  knowledge  and  experience, 
that  a  "  prejudice,"  or  judgment  before  knowledge 
and  not  grounded  on  evidence,  is  almost  always 
taken  to  signify  an  unfavorable  anticipation  about 
one ;  and  "  prejudicial"  has  actually  acquired  a  secon- 
dary meaning  of  anything  which  is  mischievous  or 
injurious. 

As  these  words  are  a  testimony  to  the  sin  of 
man,  so  there  is  a  signal  testimony  to  his  infirmity, 
to  the  limitation  of  human  faculties  and  human 
knowledge,  in  the  word  "to  retract."  To  retract 
means  properly,  as  its  derivation  declares,  no  more 
than  to  handle  over  again,  to  reconsider.  And  yet, 
so  certain  are  we  to  find  in  a  subject  which  we  recon- 
sider or  handle  a  second  time,  that  which  was  at  the 
first  rashly,  inaccurately  stated,  that  which  needs 
therefore  to  be  amended,  modified,  withdrawn;  that 
"  to  retract"  could  not  tarry  long  with  its  primary 
meaning  of  reconsidering ;  and  has  come  to  signify, 
as  we  commonly  use  it,  "  to  withdraw."  Thus  a  great 
writer  of  the  Latin  church,  at  the  close  of  his  life 
wishing  to  amend  whatever  he  might  now  perceive 
in  his  various  published  works  to  have  been  incau- 
tiously or  incorrectly  stated,  gave  to  the  book  in 
which  he  carried  out  this  intention  (for  they  had 
then  no  such  opportunities  as  second  and  third 


MANY   WORDS   ENNOBLED.  45 

editions  afford  now)  this  very  name  of  "  Retracta- 
tions," being  strictly  "  Kehandlings,"  but  in  fact,  as 
any  one  turning  to  the  work  will  at  once  perceive, 
withdrawings  of  various  statements,  which  he  now 
considered  to  need  thus  to  be  withdrawn.  What  a 
seal  does  this  word's  acquisition  of  such  a  secondary 
use  as  this  set  to  the  proverb,  humanum  est  errare. 

At  the  same  time  urging,  as  I  have  thus  done,  this 
degeneration  of  words,  I  should  greatly  err,  if  I  failed 
to  bring  before  you  the  fact  that  a  parallel  process  of 
purifying  and  ennobling  has  also  been  going  forward, 
especially,  through  the  influences  of  Divine  faith 
working  in  the  world  ;  which,  as  it  has  turned  men 
from  evil  to  good,  or  lifted  them  from  a  lower  earthly 
goodness  to  a  higher  heavenly,  so  has  it  in  like  man- 
ner elevated,  purified,  and  ennobled  a  multitude  of 
the  words  which  they  employ,  until  these  which 
once  expressed  only  an  earthly  good,  express  now  a 
heavenly.  The  gospel  of  Christ,  as  it  is  the  redemp- 
tion of  man,  so  is  it  in  a  multitude  of  instances  the 
redemption  of  his  word,  freeing  it  from  the  bondage 
of  corruption,  that  it  should  no  longer  be  subject  to 
vanity,  nor  stand  any  more  in  the  service  of  sin  or 
of  the  world,  but  in  the  service  of  God  and  of  his 
truth.  In  the  Greek  language  there  is  a  word  for 
"  humility ;"  but  this  humility  meant  for  the  Greek 
—that  is,  with  very  rarest  exceptions  —  meanness 
of  spirit.  He  who  brought  in  the  Christian  grace 


46  THE   MOBALITY   IN  WOED3. 

of  humility  did  in  so  doing  rescue  also  tbe  word 
which  expressed  it  for  nobler  uses,  and  to  a  far 
higher  dignity  than  hitherto  it  had  attained.  There 
were  "  angels"  before  heaven  had  been  opened,  but 
these  only  earthly  messengers;  "martyrs"  also,  or 
witnesses,  but  these  not  unto  blood,  nor  yet  for  God's 
highest  truth ;  "  apostles,"  but  sent  of  men ;  "  evan- 
gels," but  not  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven ;  "  advocates," 
but  not  "with  the  Father."  "Paradise"  was  a 
word  common  in  slightly  different  forms  to  almost 
all  the  nations  of  the  East ;  but  they  meant  by  it  only 
some  royal  park  or  garden  of  delights ;  till  for  the 
Jew  it  was  exalted  to  signify  the  wondrous  abode  of 
our  first  parents  ;  and  higher  honors  awaited  it  still, 
when,  on  the  lips  of  the  Lord,  it  signified  the  blissful 
waiting-place  of  faithful  departed  souls  (Luke  xxiii. 
43) ;  yea,  the  heavenly  blessedness  itself  (Rev.  ii.  7). 
Nor  was  the  word  "  regeneration"  unknown  to  the 
Greeks :  they  could  speak  of  the  earth's  regeneration 
in  the  spring-time,  of  memory  as  the  regeneration  of 
knowledge ;  the  Jewish  historian  could  describe  the 
return  of  his  countrymen  from  the  Babylonian  cap- 
tivity, and  their  re-establishment  under  Cyras  in 
their  own  land,  as  the  regeneration  of  the  Jewish 
state ;  but  still  the  word,  on  the  lips  of  either  Jew  or 
Greek,  was  very  far  removed  from  that  honor  re- 
served for  it  in  the  Christian  dispensation — namely, 
that  it  should  be  the  bearer  of  one  of  the  chiefest 
and  most  blessed  mysteries  of  the  faith.  And  many 


PAIN  AND   PLEASURE.  47 

other  words  in  like  manner  there  are  "  fetched  from 
the  very  dregs  of  paganism,"*  as  one  has  said,  which 
words  the  Holy  Spirit  has  not  refused  to  employ  for 
the  setting  forth  of  the  great  truths  of  our  redemption. 
Reversing  in  this  the  impious  deed  of  Belshazzar,  who 
profaned  the  sacred  vessels  of  God's  house  to  sinful 
and  idolatrous  uses  (Dan.  v.  2),  that  blessed  Spirit 
has  often  consecrated  the  very  idol  vessels  of  Baby- 
lon to  the  Service  of  the  sanctuary. 

Let  us  now  proceed  to  contemplate  some  of  the 
attestations  for  God's  truth,  and  then  some  of  the  play- 
ings  into  the  hands  of  the  devil's  falsehood,  which 
may  be  found  to  lurk  in  words.  And  first,  the  wit- 
nesses to  God's  truth,  the  falling  in  of  our  words  with 
his  unchangeable  word  :  for  these,  as  the  true  uses  of 
the  word,  while  the  other  are  only  its  abuses,  have 
a  prior  claim  to  be  considered.  Some  modern  false 
prophets,  who  would  gladly  explain  away  all  the 
phenomena  of  the  world  around  us,  as  declare  man 
to  be  a  sinful  being  and  enduring  the  consequences 
of  sin,  tell  us  that  pain  is  only  a  subordinate  kind  of 
pleasure,  or  at  worst  that  it  is  a  sort  of  needful  hedge 
and  guardian  of  pleasure.  But  there  is  deeper  feel- 
ing in  the  universal  heart  of  man,  bearing  witness 
to  something  very  different  from  this  shallow  expla- 
nation of  the  existence  of  pain  in  the  present  econo- 

*  Sanderson,  Sermons,  1671,  v.  2,  p.  124.  He  instances  the  Latin 
'  sacrament,"  the  Greek  "  mystery." 


:^*  THE  MORALITY   IN   WORDS. 

my  of  the  world — namely,  that  it  is  the  correlative 
of  sin,  that  it  is  punishment  /  and  to  this  the  word 
"  pain,"  which  there  can  be  no  reasonable  doubt  is 
derived  from  "poena,"  bears  continual  witness. 
Fain  is  punishment ;  so  does  the  word  itself,  no  less 
than  the  conscience  of  every  one  that  is  suffering  it, 
declare.  Just  so,  again,  there  are  those  who  will 
not  hear  of  great  pestilences  being  God's  scourges 
of  men's  sins ;  who  fain  would  find  out  natural 
causes  for  them,  and  account  for  them  by  the  help 
of  these.  I  remember  it  was  thus  with  too  many 
during  both  our  fearful  visitations  from  the  cholera. 
They  may  do  so,  or  imagine  that  they  do  so ;  yet 
every  time  they  use  the  word  "  plague,"  they  im- 
plicitly own  the  fact  which  they  are  endeavoring  to 
deny ;  for  "  plague"  means  properly  and  according 
to  its  derivation,  "  blow,"  or  "  stroke ;"  and  was  a 
title  given  to  these  terrible  diseases,  because  the  great 
universal  conscience  of  men,  which  is  never  at  fault, 
believed  and  confessed  that  these  were  "  strokes"  or 
"  blows"  inflicted  by  God  on  a  guilty  and  rebellious 
world.  "With  reference  to  such  words  so  used  we 
may  truly  say :  Vox  populi,  vox  Dei,  The  voice  of 
the  people  is  the  voice  of  God  —  a  proverb  which 
shallowly  interpreted  may  be  made  to  contain  a  most 
mischievous  falsehood  ;  but  interpreted  in  the  sense 
wherein  no  doubt  it  was  spoken,  holds  a  deepest 
truth.  We  must  only  remember  that  this  "  people" 
is  not  the  populace  either  in  high  place  or  in  low ; 


MISEK,  MISERABLE.  4:9 

and  that  this  "  voice  of  the  people"  is  not  any  mo- 
mentary outcry,  but  the  consenting  testimony  of  the 
good  and  wise,  of  those  neither  brutalized  by  igno- 
rance, nor  corrupted  by  a  false  cultivation,  in  all 
places  and  in  all  times. 

Every  one  who  admits  the  truth  which  lies  in  this 
saying  must,  I  think,  acknowledge  it  as  a  remark- 
able fact,  that  men  should  have  agreed  to  apply  the 
word  "  miser,"  or  miserable,  to  the  man  eminently 
addicted  to  the  vice  of  covetousness,  to  him  who  loves 
his  money  with  his  whole  heart  and  soul.  Here, 
too,  the  moral  instinct  lying  deep  in  all  hearts  has 
borne  testimony  to  the  tormenting  nature  of  this 
vice,  to  the  gnawing  cares  with  which  even  here  it 
punishes  him  that  entertains  it,  to  the  enmity  which 
there  is  between  it  and  all  joy ;  and  the  man  who  en- 
slaves himself  to  his  money  is  proclaimed  in  our  very 
language  to  be  a  "  miser,"  or  a  miserable  man.* 

How  deep  an  insight  into  the  failings  of  the  human 
heart  lies  at  the  root  of  many  words  ;  and  if  only  we 
would  attend  to  them,  what  valuable  warnings  many 
contain  against  subtle  temptations  and  sins !  Thus,  all 
of  us  have  probably,  more  or  less,  felt  the  temptation 
of  seeking  to  please  others  by  an  unmanly  assenting 
to  their  view  of  some  matter,  even  when  our  own 
independent  convictions  would  lead  us  to  a  different. 

*  "We  here  in  fact  say  in  a  word  what  the  Roman  moralist,  when 
he  wrote,  "  ITulla  avaritia  sine  posna  est,  quamvis  satis  sit  ipsa  pcenar 
rum,"  took  a  sentence  to  say.  , 

3 


50  THE   MORALITY   DT   WORDS. 

The  existence  of- such  a  temptation,  and  the  fact  that 
too  many  yield  to  it,  are  both  declared  in  a  Latin  word 
for  a  flatterer — "  assentator" — that  is,  "an  assen- 
ter .;"  one  who  has  not  courage  to  say  No,  when  a 
Yes  i9  expected  from  him  :  and  quite  independently 
of  the  Latin,  the  German  language,  in  its  contemptuous 
and  precisely  equivalent  use  of  "  Jaherr,"  or  "  a  yea 
Lord,"  warns  us  in  like  manner  against  all  such  un- 
manly compliances.  I  may  observe  by  the  way  that 
we  also  once  possessed  the  word  "  assentation"  in  the 
sense  of  unworthy,  flattering  lip-assent ;  the  last  exam- 
ple of  it  which  Richardson  gives  is  from  Bishop  Hall : 
"  It  is  a  fearful  presage  of  ruin  when  the  prophets 
conspire  in  assentation"  The  word  is  quite  worthy 
to  be  revived.  Again,  how  good  it  is  to  have  that 
spirit  of  depreciation  of  others,  that  willingness  to 
find  spots  and  stains  in  the  characters  of  the  greatest 
and  the  best,  that  so  they  may  not  oppress  and  re- 
buke us  with  a  goodness  and  greatness  so  far  surpas- 
sing ours — to  have  this  tendency  met  and  checked 
by  a  word  at  once  so  expressive,  and  one  which  we 
should  so  little  like  to  take  home  to  ourselves,  as  the 
French  "  denigreur."  This  word  also  is  now  I  be- 
lieve out  of  use  ;  which  is  a  pity,  while  yet  the  thing 
is  everywhere  so  frequent.  Full  too  of  instruction 
and  warning  is  our  present  employment  of  the  word 
"  libertine."  It  signified,  according  to  its  earliest  use 
in  French  and  in  English,  a  speculative  free-thinker 
in  matters  of  religion,  and  in  the  theory  of  morals, 
i 


LIBERTINE PASSION.  51 

. 

or,  it  might  be,  of  government.  But  as  by  a  sure 
process  free-thinking  does  and  will  end  in  free- 
acting,  as  he  who  has  cast  off  the  one  yoke,  will  cast 
off  the  other,  so  a  "  libertine"  came  in  two  or  three 
generations  to  signify  a  profligate,  especially  in  rela 
tion  to  women,  a  licentious  and  debauched  person. 

There  is  much,  too,  that  we  may  learn  from  look- 
ing a  little  closely  at  the  word  "  passion."  "We  some- 
times think  of  the  "  passionate"  man  as  a  man  of 
Strong  will,  and  of  real  though  ungoverned  energy. 
But  this  word  declares  to  us  most  plainly  the  con- 
trary ;  for  it,  as  a  very  solemn  use  of  it  declares, 
means  properly  "  suffering ;"  and  a  passionate  man 
is  not  a  man  doing  something,  but  one  suffering  some- 
thing to  be  done  on  him.  "When,  then,  a  man  or 
child  is  "  in  a  passion,"  this  is  no  coming  out  in  him 
of  a^strong  will,  of  a  real  energy,  but  rather  the 
proof  that  for  the  time  at  least  he  has  no  will,  no  en- 
ergy ;  he  is  suffering,  not  doing  —  suffering  his  anger, 
or  what  other  evil  temper  it  may  be,  to  lord  over 
him  without  control.  Let  no  one  then  think  of  pas- 
sion as  a  sign  of  strength.  As  reasonably  might  one 
assume  that  it  was  a  proof  of  a  man  being  a  strong 
man  that  he  was  often  well  beaten.  Such  a  fact 
would  be  evidence  that  a  strong  man  was  putting 
forth  his  strength  on  him,  but  of  anything  rather  than 
that  he  himself  was  strong.  The  same  sense  of  pas- 
sion and  feebleness  going  together,  of  the  first  be 
ing  born,  of  the  second,  lies,  as  I  may  remark  by  the 


62  THE  MORALITY   IN   WORDS. 

way,  in  the  two-fold  use  of  the  Latin  word,  impotena 
— which,  meaning  first  weak,  means  then  violent; 
and  then  often  weak  and  violent  together. 

In  our  use  of  the  word  "  talents,"  as  when  we  say, 
"  a  man  of  talents"  (not  of  "  talent,"  for  that,  as  we 
shall  see  presently,  is  nonsense),  there  is  a  clear  rec- 
ognition of  the  responsibilities  which  go  along  with 
the  possession  of  intellectual  gifts  and  endowments, 
whatsoever  they  may  be.  We  draw,  beyond  a 
doubt,  the  word  from  the  parable  in  scripture  in 
which  various  talents,  more  and  fewer,  are  committed 
to  the  several  servants  by  their  lord,  that  they  may 
trade  with  them  in  his  absence,  and  give  account 
of  their  employment  at  his  return.  Men  may  choose 
to  forget  the  ends  for  which  their  talents  were  given 
them ;  they  may  turn  them  to  selfish  ends ;  they  may 
glorify  themselves  in  them,  instead  of  glorifying  the 
Giver;  they  may  practically  deny  that  they  were 
given  at  all ;  yet  in  this  word,  till  they  can  rid  their 
vocabulary  of  it,  abides  a  continual  memento  that 
they  were  so  given,  or  rather  lent,  and  that  each 
man  shall  have  to  render  an  account  of  their  use. 

Let  us  a  little  consider  the  word  "kind."  "We 
speak  of  a  "kind"  person,  and  we  speak  of  man- 
"  kind,"  and  perhaps,  if  we  think  about  the  matter 
at  all,  we  seem  to  ourselves  to  be  using  quite  different 
words,  or  the  same  word  in  senses  quite  unconnected, 
and  having  no  bond  between  them.  But  they  are 
connected,  and  that  most  closely ;  a  "  kind"  person 


KIND   FROM   ErSTPTED.  53 

is  a  "  kinned"  person,  one  of  kin ;  one  who  acknowl- 
edges and  acts  upon  his  kinship  with  other  men, 
confesses  that  he  owes  to  them,  as  of  one  blood  with 
himself,  the  debt  of  love.  And  so  mankind  is  man- 
Jcinned.*  In  the  word  is  contained  a  declaration  of 
the  relationship  which  exists  between  all  the  mem- 
bers of  the  human  family ;  and  seeing  that  this  rela- 
tionship in  a  race  now  scattered  so  widely  and  di- 
vided so  far  asunder  can  only  be  through  a  com- 
mon head,  we  do  in  fact  every  time  that  we  use  the 
word  "  mankind,"  declare  our  faith  in  the  one  com- 
mon descent  of  the  whole  race  of  man.  And  beau- 
tiful before,  how  much  more  beautiful  now  do  the 
words  "  kind"  and  "  kindness"  appear,  when  we  per- 
ceive the  root  out  of  which  they  grow ;  that  they  are 
the  acknowledgment  in  deeds  of  love  of  our  kinship 
with  our  brethren;  and  how  profitable  to  keep  in 
mind  that  a  lively  recognition  of  the  bonds  of  blood, 
whether  of  those  closer  ones  which  unite  us  to  that 
whom  by  best  right  we  term  our  family,  or  those 
wider  ones  which  knit  us  to  the  whole  human  family, 
that  this  is  the  true  source  out  of  which  all  genuine 
love  and  affection  must  spring;  for  so  much  is 
affirmed  in  our  daily,  hourly  use  of  the  word. 

And  other  words  there  are,  having  reference  to 
the  family  and  the  relations  of  family  life,  which  are 

*  Thus  it  is  not  a  mere  play  upon  words,  but  something  much 
deeper,  which  Shakspere  puts  into  Hamlet's  mouth;  when  speak 
ing  of  his  father's  brother  who  had  married  his  mother,  he  charao-  , 
terizes  him  as  "  A  little  more  than  kin  and  less  than  kind." 


\ 


54:  THE   MORALITY   IN   WOEDS. 

not  less  full  of  teaching,  which  each  may  serve  to 
remind  of  some  duty.  For  example,  "  husband"  is 
properly  "house-band,"  the  T)and  and  bond  of  the 
house,  who  shall  bind  and  hold  it  together,  thus, 
Old  Tusser  in  his  Points  of  Husbandry  :— 

"  The  name  of  the  husband  what  is  it  to  say  ? 
Of  wife  and  of  household  the  band  and  the  stay :" 

so  that  the  very  name  may  put  him  in  mind  of  his 
authority,  and  of  that  which  he  ought  to  be  to  all  the 
members  of  the  house.  And  the  name  "  wife"  has 
its  lessons  too,  although  not  so  deep  a  one  as  the 
equivalent  word  in  some  other  tongues.  It  belongs 
to  the  same  family  of  words  as  "  weave,"  "  woof," 
"web,"  and  the  German,  "weben."  It  is  a  title 
given  to  her  who  is  engaged  at  the  web  and  woof, 
these  having  been  the  most  ordinary  branches  of 
female  industry,  of  wifely  employment,  when  the  lan- 
guage was  forming.  So  that  in  the  word  itself  is 
wrapped  up  a  hint  of  earnest  in-door  stay-at-home 
occupations,  as  being  the  fittest  for  her  who  bears 
this  name. 

But  it  was  observed  just  now  that  there  are  also 
words  which  bear  the  slime  on  them  of  the  serpent's 
trail ;  and  the  uses  of  words,  which  imply  moral  per- 
versity— I  say  not  upon  their  parts  who  now  employ 
them  in  the  senses  which  they  have  acquired,  but  on 
theirs  from  whom  little  by  little  they  received  their 
deflection,  and  were  warped  from  their  original  rec- 


PRUDE  —  SIMPLE.  55 

titude.  Thus  for  instance  is  it  with  the  word  "  prude," 
signifying  as  now  it  does  a  woman  with  an  over- 
scrupulous affectation  of  a  modesty  which  she  does 
not  really  feel,  and  betraying  the  absence  of  the  real- 
ity by  this  over-preciseness  and  niceness  about  the 
shadow.  This  use  of  the  word  must  needs  have 
been  the  result  of  a  great  corruption  of  manners  in 
them  among  whom  it  grew  up.  Goodness  must  have 
gone  strangely  out  of  fashion,  before  things  could 
have  come  to  this.  For  "  prude,"  which  is  a  French 
word,  means  virtuous  or  prudent;  "prud'homme" 
being  a  man  of  courage  and  probity.  But  where 
morals  are  greatly  and  almost  universally  relaxed, 
virtue  is  often  treated  as  hypocrisy ;  and  thus,  in  a 
dissolute  age,  and  one  disbelieving  the  existence  of 
any  inward  purity,  the  word  "  prude"  came  to  des- 
ignate one  who  affected  a  virtue,  even  as  none  were 
esteemed  to  do  anything  more ;  and  in  this  use  of  it, 
which,  having  once  acquired,  it  continues  to  retain, 
abides  an  evidence  of  the  corrupt  world's  dislike  to 
and  disbelief  in  the  realities  of  goodness,  its  willing- 
ness to  treat  them  as  mere  hypocrisies  and  shows. 

Again,  why  should  the  word  "  simple"  be  used 
slightingly,  and  "  simpleton"  more  slightingly  still  ? 
According  to  its  derivation  the  "  simple,"  is  one 
"  without  fold,"  sine  plica ;  just  what  we  may  ima- 
gine ISTathanael  to  have  been,  and  what  our  Lord  at- 
tributed as  the  highest  honor  to  him,  the  "  Israelite 
without  guile ;"  and  indeed,  what  higher  honor  could 


56  THE   MORALITY   IN   WOKDS. 

there  be  than  to  have  nothing  double  about  us,  to  be 
without  duplicities  or  folds  ?  Even  the  world,  that 
despises  "  simplicity,"  does  not  profess  to  approve  of 
"duplicity,"  or  double-foldedness.  But  inasmuch 
as  we  feel  that  in  a  world  like  ours  such  a  man  will 
make  himself  a  prey,  is  likely  to  prove  no  match  for 
the  fraud  and  falsehood  which  he  will  everywhere 
encounter,  and  as  there  is  that  in  most  men  which,  if 
they  were  obliged  to  choose  between  deceiving  and 
being  deceived,  would  make  them  choose  the  former, 
it  has  come  to  pass  that  "  simple,"  which  in  a  world 
of  righteousness  would  be  a  word  of  highest  honor, 
implies  here  in  this  world  of  ours,  something  of  scorn 
for  the  person  to  whom  it  is  applied.  And  must  it 
not  be  confessed  to  be  a  striking  fact  that  exactly  in 
the  same  way  a  person  of  deficient  intellect  is  called 
an  "  innocent,"  in  nocens,  one  that  does  not  hurt  ? 
so  that  this  word  assumes  that  the  first  and  chief 
use  men  make  of  their  intellectual  powers  will  be 
to  do  hurt,  that  where  they  are  wise,  it  will  be  to 
do  evil.  "What  a  witness  does  human  language  bear 
here  against  human  sin ! 

,.!N~or  are  these  isolated  examples  of  the  contemp- 
tuous application  of  words  expressive  of  goodness. 
They  meet  us  on  every  side.  Thus  "  silly,"  written 
"seely"  in  our  earlier  English,  is  beyond  a  doubt 
the  German  "  selig,"  which  means  "  blessed."  "We 
see  the  word  in  its  transition  state  in  our  early  poets, 
with  whom  "  silly"  is  so  often  an  affectionate  epi- 


SILLY,   INNOCENT.  57 

thet,  applied  to  sheep  as  expressive  of  their  harm- 
lessness  and  innocency.  "With  a  still  slighter  depar- 
ture from  its  original  meaning,  an  early  English  poet 
applies  the  word  to  the  Lord  of  Glory  himself,  while 
yet  an  infant  of  days,  styling  him  "this  harmless 
silly  babe."  But  here  the  same  process  went  forward 
as  with  the  words  "  simple"  and  "  innocent."  And 
the  same  moral  phenomenon  repeats  itself  continu- 
ally. For  example  :  at  the  first  promulgation  of  the 
Christian  faith,  and  while  yet  the  name  of  its  Divine 
Founder  was  somewhat  new  and  strange  to  the  ears 
of  the  heathen,  they  were  wont,  some  perhaps  out  of 
ignorance,  but  more  of  intention,  slightly  to  mispro- 
nounce this  name,  as  though  it  had  not  been  "  Chris- 
tus,"  but  "  Chrestus,"  that  word  signifying  in  Greek 
"  benevolent,"  or  "  benign."  That  they  who  did  it 
of  intention  meant  no  honor  hereby  to  the  Lord  of 
Life,  but  the  contrary,  is  certain;  and  indeed  the 
word,  like  the  "silly,"  "innocent,"  "simple,"  of 
which  we  have  already  spoken,  had  already  contract- 
ed a  slight  tinge  of  contempt,  or  else  there  would 
have  been  no  inducement  to  fasten  it  on  the  Savior. 
"What  a  strange  shifting  of  the  .moral  sense  there 
must  have  been,  before  it  could  have  done  so  be- 
fore men  could  have  found  in  a  name  implying  be- 
nignity and  goodness  a  nickname  of  scorn.  The 
French  have  their  "  bonhommie"  with  the  same  un- 
dertone of  contempt,  the  Greeks  also  a  well-known 
word.  It  is  to  the  honor  of  the  Latin,  and  is  very 

3* 


58  THE  MORALITY  IN  WOEDS. 

characteristic  of  the  best  side  of  Roman  life,  that 
"simplex"  and  " simplicitas"  never  acquired  this 
abusive  signification. 

Again,  we  all  know  how  prone  men  are  to  ascribe 
to  chance  or  fortune  those  good  gifts  and  blessings 
which  indeed  come  directly  from  God — to  build 
altars  to  fortune  rather  than  to  Him  who  is  the  author 
of  every  good  thing.  And  this  faith  of  theirs,  that 
their  blessings,  even  their  highest,  come  to  them  by 
a  blind  chance,  they  have  incorporated  in  a  word  ; 
for  "  happy"  and  "  happiness"  are  of  course  con- 
nected with  and  derived  from  "hap,"  which  is 
chance.  But  how  unworthy  is  this  word  to  express 
any  true  felicity,  of  which  the  very  essence  is  that 
it  excludes  hap  or  chance,  that  the  world  neither 
gave  it  nor  can  take  it  away.  It  is  indeed  more  ob- 
jectionable than  "lucky"  and  "fortunate,"  objec- 
tionable as  also  are  tfyese,  inasmuch  as  by  the  "  hap- 
py" man  we  mean  much  more  than  by  the  "  fortu- 
nate." Very  nobly  has  a  great  English  poet  pro- 
tested against  the  misuse  of  the  latter  word,  when 
of  one  who  had  lost  indeed  everything  beside,  but, 
as  he  esteemed,  had  kept  the  truth,  he  exclaims  :-— 
••;.-  /-Vr/ 

'  Call  not  the  royal  Swede  unfortunate., 
Who  never  did  to  fortune  bend  the  knee." 

But  another  way  in  which  the  immorality  of  words 
mainly  displays  itself,  one,  too,  in  which  perhaps 
they  work  their  greatest  mischief,  is  that  of  giving 


UGLY   WOEDS   FOR   UGLY   THINGS.  59 

honorable  names  to  dishonorable  things,  making  sin 
plausible  by  dressing  it  out  sometimes  even  in  the 
very  colors  of  goodness,  or  if  not  so,  yet  in  such  as 
go  far  to  conceal  its  own  native  deformity.  "  The 
tongue,"  as  St.  James  has  declared,  "  is  a  world  of 
iniquity"  (iii.  6) ;  or  as  some  interpreters  affirm  the 
words  ought  rather  to  be  translated,  and  they  would 
be  then  still  more  to  our  purpose,  "  the  ornament  of 
iniquity,"  that  which  sets  it  out  in  fair  and  attractive 
colors :  and  those  who  understand  the  original  will 
at  once  perceive  that  such  a  meaning  may  possibly 
lie  in  the  words.  On  the  whole  I  do  not  believe 
that  these  expositors  are  right,  yet  certainly  the  con- 
nection of  the  Greek  word  for  "tongue"  with  our 
"gloze,"  "glossy,"  with  the  German  "gleissen,"  to 
smoothe  over  or  polish,  with  an  obsolete  Greek  word 
as  well,  also  signifying  "  to  polish,"  is  not  accident- 
al, but  real,  and  may  well  suggest  some  searching 
thoughts,  as  to  the  uses  whereunto  we  turn  this 
"5<?s£,"  but,  as  it  may  therefore  prove  also,  this 
worst  "  member  that  we  have." 

How  much  wholesomer  on  all  accounts  is  it  that"A 
there  should  be  an  ugly  word  for  an  ugly  thing,  one 
involving  moral  condemnation  and  disgust,  even  at 
the  expense  of  a  little  coarseness,  rather  than  one 
which  plays  fast  and  loose  with  the  eternal  princi- 
ples of  morality,  which  makes  sin  plausible,  and 
shifts  the  divinely-reared  landmarks  of  right  and 
wrong,  thus  bringing  the  user  under  the  wo  of 


60  THE  MORALITY   IN   WORDS. 

them  "  that  call  evil  good,  and  good  evil,  that  put 
darkness  for  light,  and  light  for  darkness,  that  put 
sweet  for  bitter,  and  bitter  for  sweet"  (Isa.  v.  20)  — 
a  text  on  which  South  has  written  four  of  his  great- 
est sermons,  with  reference  to  this  very  matter,  and 
bearing  this  striking  title,  On  the  fatal  imposture 
and  force  of  words.  How  awful,  yea,  how  fearful, 
is  this  force  and  imposture  of  theirs,  leading  men 
captive  at  will.  There  is  an  atmosphere  about  them 
which  they  are  evermore  diffusing,  an  atmosphere 
of  life  or  death,  which  we  insensibly  inhale  at  each 
moral  breath  we  draw.*  "  The  winds  of  the  soul," 
as  one  called  them  of  old,  they  fill  its  sails,  and  are 
continually  impelling  it  upon  its  course,  heavenward 
or  to  hell.  How  immense  is  the  difference  as  to  the 
light  in  which  we  shall  learn  to  regard  a  sin,  accord- 
ing as  we  have  been  wont  to  designate  and  to  hear 
it  designated  by  a  word  which  brings  out  its  loath- 
someness and  deformity; — or  by  one  which  con- 
ceals these;  as  when  in  Italy,  during  the  period 
that  poisoning  was  rifest,  nobody  was  said  to  be  poi- 
soned ;  it  was  only  that  the  death  of  some  was  "  as- 
sisted" (aiutata) ;  or  again,  by  one  which  seeks  to 
turn  the  edge  of  the  Divine  threatenings  against  it 
by  a  jest ;  as  when  in  France  a  subtle  poison,  by 
which  impatient  heirs  delivered  themselves  from 

*  Bacon's  words  have  been  often  quoted,  but  they  mil  bear  be- 
ing quoted  once  more :  "  Credunt  enim  homines  rationem  suam  ver- 
Lis  imperare.  Sed  fit  etiam  ut  verba  vim  euam  super  intellectuiu 
retorqueant  et  reflectant" 


THE   IMPOSTUKE   OF   WOKDS.  61 

those  who  stood  between  them  and  the  inheritance 
which  they  coveted,  was  called  "  poudre  de  succes- 
sion ;"  or,  worse  than  all,  which  shall  throw  a  flimsy 
vail  of  sentiment  over  it.  As  an  example  of  the  last, 
what  a  source  of  mischief  in  all  our  country  parishes 
is  the  one  practice  of  calling  a  child  born  out  of 
wedlock,  a  "love-child"  instead  of  a  bastard.  It 
would  be  hard  to  estimate  how  much  it  has  lowered 
the  tone  and  standard  of  morality  among  us  ;  or  for 
how  many  young  women  it  may  have  helped  to 
make  the  downward  way  more  sloping  still.  How 
vigorously  ought  we  to  oppose  ourselves  to  all  such 
immoralities  of  language ;  which  opposition  will  yet 
never  be  easy  or  pleasant ;  for  many  that  will  endure 
to  commit  a  sin,  will  resent  having  that  sin  called 
by  its  right  name.* 

Coarse  as,  according  to  our  present  usages  of  lan- 

*  On  the  general  subject  of  the  reaction  of  a  people's  language  on 
that  people's  moral  life,  I  will  adduce  some  words  of  Milton,  who, 
as  he  did  so  much  to  enlarge,  to  enrich,  to  purify  our  mother  tongue, 
BO  also  in  the  Latin  which  lie  wielded  so  well,  has  thus  declared  his 
mind :  "  Neque  enim  qui  sermo,  purusne  an  corruptus,  qusove  lo- 
quendi  proprietas  quotidiana  populo  sit,  parvi  interesse  arbitrandum 
est^  quse  res  Athenis  non  semel  saluti  fuit ;  immo  vero,  quod  Plato- 
nis  sententia  est,  immutato  vestiendi  more  habituque  graves  in  Re- 
publics motus  mutationesque  portendi,  equidem  potius  collabente  in 
vitium  atque  errorem  loquendi  usu  occasum  ejus  urbis  remque  hu- 
milem  et  obscuram  subsequi  crediderim :  verba  enim  partim  inscita 
et  pntida,  partim  mendosa  et  perperam  prolata,  quid  si  ignavoa  et 
oscitantes  et  ad  servile  quid  vis  jam  olim  paratos  incolarum  animos 
hand  levi  indicio  declarant  ?  Contra  nullum  unquam  audivimus  im- 
perium,  nullam  civitatem  non  mediocriter  saltern  floruisse,  quamdiu 
lingure  sua  gratia,  suusque  cultus  constitit"  Compare  an  interesting 
epistle  (the  114th)  of  Seneca 


62  THE   MORALITY   IN   WOEDS. 

guage,  may  be  esteemed  the  word  by  which  our 
plain-speaking  Anglo-Saxon  fathers  were  wont  to 
designate  the  unhappy  women  who  make  a  trade  of 
selling  their  bodies  to  the  lusts  of  men,  yet  is  there  a 
profound  moral  sense  in  that  word,  bringing  promi- 
nently out,  as  it  does,  the  true  vileness  of  their  occu- 
pation, who  for  hire  are  content  to  profane  and  lay 
waste  the  deepest  sanctities  of  their  life.  Consider 
the  truth  which  is  witnessed  for  here,  as  compared 
with  the  falsehood  of  many  other  titles  by  which 
they  have  been  known — names  which  may  them- 
selves be  called  "  whited  sepulchres,"  so  fair  are 
they  without,  yet  hiding  so  much  foul  within ;  as 
for  instance,  that  in  the  French  language  which  as- 
cribes joy  to  a  life  which  more  surely  than  any  other 
dries  up  all  the  sources  of  gladness  in  the  heart, 
brings  anguish,  astonishment,  blackest  melancholy, 
on  all  who  have  addicted  themselves  ~to  it.  In  the 
same  way  how  much  more  moral  words  are  the 
English  "  sharper,"  and  "  blackleg,"  than  the  French 
"  chevalier  d'industrie :"  and  the  same  holds  good 
of  the  English  equivalent,  coarse  as  it  is,  for  tbe  La- 
tin "  conciliatrix."  In  this  last  word  we  have  a  no- 
table example  of  the  putting  of  bitter  for  sweet,  and 
darkness  for  light,  of  the  attempt  to  present  a  dis- 
graceful occupation  on  an  amiable,  almost  a  senti- 
mental side,  rather  than  in  its  own  true  deformity 
and  ugliness.* 

*  So  conscious  have  men  been  of  this  tendency  of  theirs  to  throw 
the  mantle  of  an  honorable  word  over  a  dishonorable  tiling,  or  vice 


WORDS   AGAINST   ARGUMENTS.  63 

If  I  wanted  any  further  proof  of  this  which  I  have 
been  urging,  namely,  the  moral  atmosphere  which 
words  diffuse,  I  would  ask  you  to  observe  how  the 
first  thing  which  men  will  do,  when  engaged  in  con- 
troversy with  others,  be  it  in  the  conflict  of  the 
tongue  or  the  pen,  or  of  weapons  sharper  yet,  if 
sharper  there  be,  will  be  to  assume  some  honorable 
name  to  themselves,  which,  if  possible,  begs  the 
whole  matter  in  dispute,  and  at  the  same  time  to 
affix  on  their  adversaries  a  name  which  shall  place 
them  in  an  invidious,  or  a  ridiculous,  or  a  contempt- 
ible, or  an  odious  light.  There  is  a  deep  instinct  in 
men,  deeper  perhaps  than  they  give  any  account  of 
to  themselves,  which  tells  them  how  far  this  will  go ; 
that  multitudes,  utterly  unable  to  weigh  the  argu- 
ments of  the  case,  will  yet  be  receptive  of  the  influ- 
ences which  these  words  continually,  though  almost 
imperceptibly,  diffuse.  By  arguments  they  might 
hope  to  gain  over  the  reason  of  a  few,  but  by  these 
they  enlist  what  at  first  are  so  much  more  effectual, 

versa,  of  the  temptation  to  degrade  an  honorable  thing,  when  they 
do  not  love  it,  by  a  dishonorable  appellation,  that  the  Greek  lan- 
guage has  a  word  significative  of  this  very  attempt,  and  its  great 
moral  teachers  frequently  occupy  themselves  in  detecting  this  most 
frequent,  yet  perhaps  practically  most  mischievous,  among  all  the 
impostures  of  words  —  vntKopi&aOat,  itself  a  word  with  an  interesting 
history.  And  when  Thucydides  (iii.  82)  would  paint  the  fearful 
moral  deterioration  of  Greece  in  the  progress  of  its  great  Civil  War, 
he  adduces  this  alteration  of  the  received  value  of  .words,  this  fitting 
of  false  names  to  everything  —  names  of  honor  to  the  base,  and  of 
baseness  to  the  honorable  —  as  one  of  its  most  striking  signs,  even 
as  it  again  set  forward  the  evil,  of  which  it  had  been  first  the  result 


64  THE   MOEALITY   IN   WOEDS. 

the  passions  and  prejudices  of  many,  on  their  side. 
Thus  when  at  the  beginning  of  our  Civil  "Wars  the 
parliamentary  party  styled  themselves  "  The  Godly," 
and  the  royalists  "  The  Malignants,"  it  is  very  cer- 
tain that  wherever  they  could  procure  entrance  for 
these  words,  the  question  upon  whose  side  the  right 
lay  was  already  decided.  I  do  not  adduce  this  in- 
stance as  at  all  implying  that  the  royalists  did  not 
make  exactly  the  same  employment  of  question-beg- 
ging words,  and  of  words  steeped  quite  as  deeply  in 
the  passion  which  animated  them,  but  only  as  a  suf- 
ficient illustration  of  my  meaning. 

Seeing,  then,  that  language  contains  so  faithful  a 
record  of  the  good  and  of  the  evil  which  in  time  past 
have  been  working  in  the  minds  and  hearts  of  men, 
we  should  not  err  if  we  regard  it  as  a  moral  barome- 
ter, which  indicates  and  permanently  marks  the  rise 
or  fall  of  a  nation's  life.  To  study  a  people's  lan- 
guage will  be  to  study  them,  and  to  study  them  at 
best  advantage,  where  they  present  themselves  to  us 
under  fewest  disguises,  most  nearly  as  they  are. 
Too  many  have  had  a  hand  in  it,  and  in  causing  it 
to  arrive  at  its  present  shape,  it  is  too  entirely  the 
collective  work  of  the  whole  nation,  the  result  of  the 
united  contributions  of  all,  it  obeys  too  immutable 
laws,  to  allow  any  successful  tampering  with  it,  any 
making  of  it  to  witness  other  than  the  actual  facts  of 
the  case. 

The  frivolity  of  an  age  or  nation,  its  mockery  of 


WOKDS    KEVEAL   NATIONAL   CHAKACTER.  65 

itself,  its  inability  to  comprehend  the  true  dignity 
and  meaning  of  life,  the  feebleness  of  its  moral  in- 
dignation, all  this  will  find  an  utterance  in  the  use 
of  solemn  and  earnest  words  in  senses  comparatively 
trivial  or  even  ridiculous,  in  the  squandering  of  such 
as  ought  to  have  been  reserved  for  the  highest  mys- 
teries of  the  spiritual  life  on  slight  an4  secular  ob- 
jects, in  the  employment  almost  in  jest  and  play  of 
words  implying  the  deepest  moral  guilt — as  for  in- 
stance the  Trench  '  perfide  ;'  while,  on  the  contrary, 
the  high  sentiment,  the  scorn  of  everything  mean  or 
base  of  another  people  or  time,  will  as  certainly  in 
one  way  or  another  stamp  themselves  on  the  words 
which  they  employ;  and  thus,  too,  with  whatever 
good  or  evil  they  may  own. 

Often  a  people's  use  of  some  single  word  will  af- 
ford us  a  deeper  insight  into  their  real  condition, 
their  habits  of  thought  and  feeling,  than  whole  vol- 
umes written  expressly  with  the  intention  of  impart- 
ing this  insight.  Thus  our  word  "idiot"  is  abun- 
dantly characteristic,  not  indeed  of  English,  but  of 
Greek  life,  from  which  we  have  derived  it  and  our 
use  of  it.  The  iS^T»s  or  "  idiot"  was  in  its  earliest 
usage  the  private  man,  as  contradistinguished  from 
him  who  was  clothed  with  some  office  and  had  a 
share  in  the  management  of  public  affairs.  In  this 
its  primary  use  it  is  occasionally  employed  in  Eng- 
lish ;  as  in  Jeremy  Taylor,  who  says,  "  Humility  is 
a  duty  in  great  ones  as  well  as  in  idiots."  It  came 


66  THE   MORALITY   IN   WORDS. 

then  to  signify  a  rude,  ignorant,  unskilled,  intellect- 
ually-unexercised  person,  a  boor ;  this  derivation  or 
secondary  sense  bearing  witness,  as  has  been  most 
truly  said,  to  "the  Greek  notion  of  the  indispensa- 
bleness  of  public  life,  even  to  the  right  development 
of  the  intellect,"*  a  feeling  which,  was  entirely  in- 
woven in  the  Greek  habit  of  thought,  lying  at  the 
foundation  of  all  schemes  of  mental  culture.  Nor  is 
it  easy  to  see  how  it  could  have  uttered  itself  with 
greater  clearness  than  it  does  in  this  secondary  use 
of  the  word  "  idiot."  Our  tertiary,  according  to 
which  the  "  idiot"  is  one  deficient  in  intellect,  and 
not  merely  one  with  its  powers  unexercised,  is  but 
this  secondary  pushed  a  little  further.  Again,  the 
innermost  distinction  between  the  Greek  mind  and 
the  Hebrew  reveal  themselves  in  the  several  saluta- 
tions of  each,  the  "rejoice"  of  the  first,  the  "peace" 
of  the  second.  The  clear,  cheerful,  world-enjoying 
temper  of  the  Greek  embodies  itself  in  the  first ;  he 
could  desire  nothing  better  or  higher  for  himself,  and 
thus  could  not  wish  it  for  his  friend,  than  to  have 
joy  in  his  life.  But  the  Hebrew  had  a  deeper  long- 
ing within  him,  and  one  which  finds  utterance  in 
his  "peace."  It  is  not  hard  to  perceive  why  this 
people  should  have  been  chosen  as  the  first  bearers 
of  that  truth  which  indeed  enables  truly  to  rejoice, 
but  only  through  first  bringing  peace  /  nor  why 
from  them  the  word  of  life  should  first  go  forth.  It 
*  Archdeacon  Harp'«  ^fission  of  the  Comforter,  p.  652. 


MODIFICATIONS   OF   MEANING.  67 

may  be  urged,  indeed,  that  these  were  only  forms, 
and  so  in  great  part  they  may  ,have  at  length  be- 
come ;  as  in  our  "  good-by"  or  u  adieu"  we  can  hard- 
Jy  be  said  now  to  commit. our  friend  to  the  Divine 
protection ;  yet  still  they  were  not  such  at  the  first, 
nor  would  they  have  held  their  ground,  if  ever  they 
had  become  such  altogether. 

So,  too,  the  modifications  of  meaning  which,  a 
word  has  undergone,  as  it  had  been  transplanted 
from  one  soil  to  another,  the  way  in  which  one  na- 
tion receiving  a  word  from  another,  has  yet  brought 
into  it  some  new  force  which  was  foreign  to  it  in 
the  tongue  whence  it  was  borrowed,  has  deepened, 
or  extenuated,  or  otherwise  altered  its  meaning —  > 
all  this  may  prove  profoundly  instructive,  and  may 
reveal  to  us,  as  perhaps  nothing  else  would,  the 
most  fundamental  diversities  existing  between  them. 
Observe,  for  instance,  how  different  is  the  word 
"  self-sufficient"  as  used  by  us,  and  by  the  heathen 
nations  of  antiquity.  The  Greek  work  exactly  cor- 
responding to  it  is  a  word  of  honor,  and  applied  to 
men  in  their  praise.  And  indeed  it  was  the  glory 
of  the  heathen  philosophy  to  teach  a  man  to  find 
his  resources  in  his  own  bosom,  to  be  thus  sufficient 
for  himself;  and  seeing  that  a  true  centre  without 
him  and  above  him,  a  centre  in  God,  had  not  been 
revealed  to  him,  it  was  no  shame  for  him  to  seek  it 
there ;  better  this,  such  as  it  was,  than  no  centre  at 
all.  But  the  gospel  has  taught  us  another  lesson,  to 


68  THE   MOKALITY   IN   WOKDS. 

find  our  sufficiency  in  God :  and  thus  "  self-suffi- 
cient," which  with  the  Greek  was  a  word  in  honor- 
able use,  is  not  so  with  us.  Self-sufficiency  is  not  a 
quality  which  any  man  desires  now  to  be  attributed 
to  him.  We  have  a  feeling  about  the  word,  which 
causes  it  to  carry  its  own  condemnation  with  it ;  and 
its  different  uses,  for  honor  once,  for  reproach  now, 
do  in  fact  ground  themselves  on  the  central  differ- 
ences of  heathenism  and  Christianity. 

Once  more,  we  might  safely  conclude  that  a  na- 
tion would  not  be  likely  tamely  to  submit  to  tyran- 
ny and  wrong,  which  had  made  "  quarrel"  out  of 
"  querela."  The  Latin  word  means  properly  "  com- 
plaint," and  we  have  in  "  querulous"  this  its  proper 
meaning  coming  distinctly  out.  Not  so  however  in 
"  quarrel ;"  for  Englishmen,  having  been  wont  not 
merely  to  complain,  but  to  set  vigorously  about 
righting  and  redressing  themselves,  their  griefs 
being  also  grievances,  out  of  this  word,  which  might 
have  given  them  only  "  querulous"  and  "  querulous- 
ness,"  they  have  gotten  "  quarrel"  as  well. 

On  the  other  hand  we  can  not  wonder  that  Italy 
should  fill  our  Great  Exhibition  with  beautiful  speci- 
mens of  her  skill  in  the  arts,  with  statues  and  sculp- 
tures of  rare  loveliness,  but  should  only  rivet  her 
chains  the  more  closely  by  the  weak  and  ineffectual 
efforts  which  she  makes  to  break  them,  when  she 
can  degrade  the  word  "  virtuoso,"  or  "  the  virtuous," 
to  signify  one  accomplished  in  painting,  music,  and 


ITALIAN    WOKD3   DEGRADED.  69 

sculpture,  such  .things  as  are  the  ornamental  fringe 
of  a  nation's  life,  but  can  never,  be  made,  without 
loss  of  all  manliness  of  character,  its  main  texture 
and  woof — not  to  say  that  excellence  in  these  fine 
arts  has  been  in"  too  many  cases  divorced  from  all 
true  virtue  and  worth.  And  what  shall  we  say  con- 
cerning the  uses  to  which  she  turns  her  "  bravo"  ? 
The  opposite  exaggeration  of  the  ancient  dwellers  in 
Italy,  who  often  made  "  virtus"  to  signify  warlike 
courage  alone,  as  if  for  them  all  virtues  were  inclu- 
ded in  this  one,  was  at  all  events  more  tolerable  than 
this  ;  for  there  is  a  sense  in  which  a  man's  "  valor" 
is  his  value.  How  little,  again,  the  modern  Italians 
live  in  the  spirit  of  their  ancient  worthies,  or  reve- 
rence the  greatest  among  them,  we  may  argue  from 
the  fact  that  they  have  been  content  to  take  the 
name  of  one  among  their  noblest,  and  degrade  it  so 
far  that  every  glib  and  loquacious  hireling  who 
shows  strangers  about  their  picture  galleries,  palaces, 
and  ruins,  is  termed  by  them  a  "  Cicerone,"  or  a 
Cicero !  So  too  the  French  use  of  the  word  "  honne- 
tete","  as  external  civility,  marks  a  tendency  to  ac- 
cept the  shows  and  pleasant  courtesies  of  social  life 
in  the  room  of  deeper  moral  qualities. 

How  much  too  may  be  learned  by  noting  the 
words  which  nations  have  been  obliged  to  borrow 
from  other  nations,  as  not  having  them  of  home- 
growth —  this,  in  general,  if  not  in  every  case,  testi- 
fying that  the  thing  itself  was  not  native,  was  only 


70  THE   MORALITY   IN   WORDS 

an  exotic,  transplanted,  like  the  word  which  indicated 
it,  from  a  foreign  soil.  Thus  it  is  singularly  charac- 
teristic of  the  social  and  political  life  of  England,  as 
distinguished  from  that  of  the  other  European  na- 
tions, that  to  it  alone  the  word  "  clubs"  belongs ; 
that  the  French  and  German  languages  have  been 
alike  unable  to  grow  a  word  of  their  own  as  its 
equivalent,  and  have  both  been  obliged  to  borrow 
this  from  us.  And  no  wonder  ;  for  these  voluntary 
associations  of  men  for  the  furthering  of  such  social 
or  political  ends  as  are  near  to  the  hearts  of  the  as- 
sociates could  have  only  had  their  rise  under  such 
favorable  circumstances  as  ours.  In  no  country 
where  there  was  not  extreme  personal  freedom 
could  they  have  sprung  up ;  and  as  little  in  any 
where  men  did  not  know  how  to  use  this  freedom 
with  moderation  and  self-restraint,  could  they  long 
have  been  endured.  It  was  comparatively  easy  to 
adopt  the  word ;  but  the  ill  success  of  the  "  club" 
itself  everywhere  save  here  where  it  is  native,  has 
shown  that  it  was  not  so  easy  to  transplant  the  thing. 
"While  we  have  lent  this  and  other  words,  mostly 
political,  to  the  French  and  to  the  German,  it  would 
not  be  less  instructive,  were  this  a  suitable  oppor- 
tunity, to  trace  our  corresponding  obligations  to 
them. 

But  it  is  time  to  bring  this  lecture  to  an  end. 
These  illustrations,  to  which  it  would  not  be  hard  to 
add  many  more,  are  amply  enough  to  justify  what 


WORDS   TAKE   THEIR   SIDE.  71 

I  have  asserted  of  the  existence  of  a  moral  element 
in  words ;  they  are  enough  to  iqake  us  feel  about 
them,  that  they  do  not  hold  themselves  neutral  in 
the  great  conflict  between  good  and  evil,  light  and 
darkness,  which  is  dividing  the  world ;  that  they 
are  not  contented  to  be  the  passive  vehicles,  now  of 
the  truth,  and  now  of  falsehood.  We  see  on  the 
contrary  that  they  continually  take  their  side,  are 
some  of  them  children  of  light,  others  children  of 
this  world,  or  even  of  darkness;  they  beat  with  the 
pulses  of  our  life ;  they  stir  with  our  passions ;  they 
receive  from  us  the  impressions  of  our  good  and  of 
our  evil,  which  again  they  are  active  further  to 
propagate  among  us.  Must  we  not  own,  then,  that 
there  is  a  wondrous  and  mysterious  world,  of  which 
we  may  hitherto  have  taken  too  little  account, 
around  us  and  about  us  ?  and  may  there  not  be  a 
deeper  meaning  than  hitherto  we  have  attached  to 
it,  lying  in  that  solemn  declaration,  "  By  thy  words 
thou  shalt  be  justified,  and  by  thy  words  thon  shalt 
be  condemned"  ? 


LECTURE  m. 

THE    HISTORY  IN  WOEDS. 

IT  might  at  first  sight  appear  as  if  language,  apart 
that  is  from  literature  and  books,  and  where  these 
did  not  exist,  was  the  frailest,  the  most  untrustworthy, 
of  all  the  vehicles  of  knowledge,  and  that  most  likely 
to  betray  its  charge :  yet  is  it  in  fact  the  great,  often- 
times the  only,  connecting  link  between  the  present 
and  the  remotest  past,  an  ark  riding  above  water- 
floods  that  have  swept  away  every  other  landmark 
and  memorial  of  ages  and  generations.  Far  beyond 
all  written  records  in  a  language,  the  language  it- 
self stretches  back  and  offers  itself  for  our  investiga- 
tion—  "the  pedigree  of  nations,"  as  Johnson  calls  it 
—  itself  a  far  more  ancient  monument  and  document 
than  any  writing  which  it  contains.  These  records, 
moreover,  may  have  been  falsified  by  carelessness, 
by  vanity,  by  fraud,  by  a  multitude  of  causes ;  but  it 
is  never  false,  never  deceives  us,  if  we  know  how  to 
question  it  aright. 

And  this  questioning  o£  it  will  often  lead  to  con- 
clusions of  extreme  importance.  Thus  there  have 
been  those  who  have  denied  on  one  ground  or  anoth- 


ORIGINAL   UNITY   OF   LANGUAGE.  73 

er  the  accuracy  of  the  Scripture  statement  that  the 
whole  earth  was  peopled  from,  a  single  pair;  who 
have  sought  to  prove  that  there  must  have  been  many 
beginnings,  many  centres.  In  answer  to  these,  the 
physical  unity  of  the  race  of  mankind  has  been  tri- 
umphantly shown  by  Dr.  Prichard  and  others  ;  but  all 
recent  investigations  plainly  announce  that  a  yet 
stronger  evidence,  and  a  moral  argument  more  convin- 
cing still,  for  the  unity  of  mankind  will  be  found  in  the 
proofs  which  are  daily  accumulating  of  the  tendency 
of  all  languages,  however  widely  they  may  differ  now, 
to  refer  themselves  to  a  common  stock  and  single  foun- 
tain-head. Of  course  we  need  not  these  proofs,  who 
believe  the  fact,  because  it  is  written ;  yet  can  we  only 
rejoice  at  each  new  homage  which  Science  pays  to 
revealed  Truth,  being  sure  that  at  the  last  she  will 
stand  in  her  service  altogether. 

Such  investigations  as  these,  however,  lie  plainly 
out  of  your  sphere.  ISTot  so,  however,  those  humbler, 
yet  not  less  interesting  inquiries,  which  by  the  aid 
of  any  tolerable  dictionary  you  may  carry  on  into  the 
past  history  of  your  own  land,  as  born  witness  to  by 
the  present  language  of  its  people,  on  which  language 
the  marks  and  vestiges  oi"  great  revolutions  are  visibly 
and  profoundly  impressed,  never  again  to  be  obliter- 
ated from  it.  You  know  how  the  geologist  is  able 
from  the  different  strata  and  deposites,  primary,  sec- 
ondary, or  tertiary,  succeeding  one  another,  which 
he  meets,  to  conclude  the  successive  physical  changes 

4 


T4r  THE   HISTORY   IN   WOKDS. 

through  which  a  region  has  passed  ;  is  hi  a  condition 
'to  preside  at  those  changes,  to  measure  the  forces 
which  were  at  work  to  produce  them,  and  almost  to 
indicate  their  date.  Now  with  such  a  composite  lan- 
guage as  the  English  before  us,  we  may  carry  on  mor- 
al and  historical  researches  precisely  analogous  to  his. 
Here  too  are  strata  and  deposites,  not  of  gravel  and 
chalk,  sandstone  and  limestone,  but  of  Celtic,  Latiny 
Saxon,  Danish,  Norman,  and  then  again  Latin  and 
French  words,  with  slighter  intrusions  from  other 
sources :  and  any  one  with  skill  to  analyze  the  lan- 
guage might  re-create  for  himself  the  history  of  the 
people  speaking  that  language,  might  come  to  appre- 
ciate the  divers  elements  out  of  which  that  people  was 
composed,  in  what  proportion  these  were  mingled, 
and  in  what  succession  they  followed  one  upon  the 
other. 

Take  for  example  the  relation  in  which  the  Saxon 
and  Norman  occupants  of  this  land  stood  to  one 
another.  I  doubt  not  that  an  account  of  this,  in  the 
main  as  accurate  as  it  would  be  certainly  instructive, 
might  be  drawn  from  an  intelligent  study  of  the  con- 
tributions which  they  have  severally  made  to  the 
English  language,  as  bequeathed  to  us  jointly  by  them 
both.  Supposing  all  other  records  to  have  perished, 
we  might  still  work  out  and  almost  reconstitute  the 
history  by  these  aids ;  even  as  now,  when  so  many 
documents,  so  many  institutions  survive,  this  must 
still  be  accounted  the  most  important,  and  that  of 


SAXON    AND   NOBHAN   WOKD8.  75 

which  the  study  will  introduce  us,  as  no  other  can, 
into  the  innermost  heart  and  life  of  great  periods  of 
our  history. 

Nor  indeed  is  it  hard  to  see  why  the  language 
must  contain  such  instruction  as  this,  when  we  a 
little  realize  to  ourselves  the  stages  by  which  it  has 
come  down  to  us  in  its  present  shape.  There  was  a 
time  when  the  languages  which  the  Saxon  and  the 
Norman  severally  spoke,  existed  each  by  the  side  of, 
but  unmingled  with  the  other ;  one,  that  of  the  small 
dominant  class,  the  other  that  of  the  great  body  of 
the  people.  By  degrees,  however,  with  the  fusion 
of  the  two  races,  the  two  languages  also  fused  into  a 
third.  At  once  there  would  exist  duplicates  for 
many  things.  But  as  in  popular  speech  two  words 
will  not  long  exist  side  by  side  to  designate  the  same 
thing,  it  became  a  question  how  the  relative  claims 
of  the  Saxon  and  Norman  word  should  adjust  them- 
selves, which  should  remain,  which  should  be  dropped; 
or,  if  not  dropped,  should  be  transferred  to  some 
other  object,  or  express  some  other  relation.  It  is 
not  of  course  meant  that  this  was  ever  formally  pro- 
posed, or  as  something  to  be  settled  by  agreement; 
but  practically,  one  was  to  be  taken,  one  left.  Which 
was  it  that  should  maintain  its  ground  ?  Evidently 
where  a  word  was  often  on  the  lips  of  one  race,  its 
equivalent  seldom  on  those  of  the  other,  where  it  in- 
timately cohered  with  the  manner  of  life  of  one,  was 
only  remotely  in  contact  with  that  of  the  other,  where 


76  THE   HISTORY   IN   WORDS. 

it  laid  strong  hold  on  one,  but  slight  on  the  other,  the 
issue  could  not  be  doubtful.  In  several  cases  the 
matter  was  simpler  still :  it  was  not  that  one  word 
expelled  the  other,  or  that  rival  claims  had  to  be  ad- 
justed ;  but  there  never  had  existed  more  than  one 
word,  the  thing  having  been  quite  strange  to  the 
other  section  of  the  nation. 

Here  is  the  explanation  of  the  assertion  just  now 
made — namely,  that  we  might  almost  reconstruct 
our  history,  so  far  as  it  turned  upon  the  Norman  con- 
quest, by  an  analysis  of  our  present  language,  a  mus- 
tering of  its  words  in  groups,  and  a  close  observation 
of  the  nature  and  character  of  those  which  the  two 
races  have  severally  contributed  to  it.  Thus  we 
should  confidently  conclude  that  the  Norman  was 
the  ruling  race,  from  the  noticeable  fact  that  all  the 
words  of  dignity,  state,  honor,  and  pre-eminence,  with 
one  remarkable  exception  (to  be  adduced  presently), 
descend  to  us  from  them — sovereign,  sceptre,  throne, 
realm,  royalty,  homage,  prince,  duke,  count,  ("  earl" 
indeed  is  Scandinavian,  though  he  must  borrow  his 
"  countess"  from  the  Norman),  chancellor,  treasurer, 
palace,  castle,  hall,  dome,  and  a  multitude  more. 
At  the  same  time  the  one  remarkable  exception  of 
"  king"  would  make  us,  even  did  we  know  nothing 
of  the  actual  facts,  suspect  that  the  chieftain  of  this 
ruling  race  came  in  not  upon  a  new  title,  not  as  over- 
throwing a  former  dynasty,  but  claiming  to  be  in  the 
rightful  line  of  its  succession ;  that  the  true  continu- 


SAXON   AND   NOEMAN   WORDS.  77 

ity  of  the  nation  had  not,  in  fact  any  more  than  in 
word,  been  entirely  broken,  but,survived,  in  due  time 
to  assert  itself  anew. 

And  yet,  while  the  statelier  superstructure  of  the 
language,  almost  all  articles  of  luxury,  all  that  has  to 
do  with  the  chase,  with  chivalry,  with  personal  adorn- 
ment, is  Gorman  throughout ;  with  the  broad  basis 
of  the  language,  and  therefore  of  the  life,  it  is  other- 
wise. The  great  features  of  nature,  sun,  moon,  and 
stars,  earth,  water,  and  fire,  all  the  prime  social  rela- 
tions, father,  mother,  husband,  wife,  son,  daughter, 
these  are  Saxon.  The  palace  and  the  castle  may 
have  come  to  us  from  the  Norman,  but  to  the  Saxon 
we  owe  far  dearer  names,  the  house,  the  roof,  the 
home,  the  hearth.  His  "  board"  too,  and  often  prob- 
ably it  was  no  more,  has  a  more  hospitable  sound 
than  the  "  table"  of  his  lord.  His  sturdy  arms  turns 
the  soil ;  he  is  the  boor,  the  hind,  the  churl ;  or  if  his 
Norman  master  has  a  name  for  him,  it  is  one  which 
on  his  lips  becomes  more  and  more  a  title  of  oppro- 
brium and  contempt,  the  villain.  The  instruments 
used  in  cultivating  the  earth,  the  flail,  the  plough, 
the  sickle,  the  spade,  are  expressed  in  his  language ; 
so  too  the  main  products,  of  the  earth,  as  wheat,  rye, 
oats,  bere,  i.  e.  barley ;  and  no  less  the  names  of  do- 
mestic animals.  Concerning  these  last  it  is  not  a 
little  characteristic  to  observe  (and  it  may  be  remem- 
bered that  Wamba,  the  Saxon  jester  in  Ivanhoe^ 
plays  the  philologer  here),  that  the  names  of  almost 


78  THE   HISTORY   IN  WORDS. 

all  animals  so  long  as  they  are  alive,  are  thus  Saxon, 
but  when  dressed  and  prepared  for  food  become 
Norman — a  fact  indeed  which  we  might  have  ex- 
pected beforehand  ;  for  the  Saxon  hind  had  the  charge 
and  labor  of  tending  and  feeding  them,  but  only  that 
they  might  appear  on  the  table  of  has  Gorman  lord. 
Thus  ox,  steer,  cow,  are  Saxon,  but  beef  Norman ; 
calf  is  Saxon,  but  veal  Norman ;  sheep  is  Saxon,  but 
mutton  Norman ;  so  it  is  severally  with  swine  and 
pork,  deer  and  venison,  fowl  and  pullet.  Bacon,  the 
only  flesh  which  perhaps  ever  came  within  his  reach 
is  the  single  exception. 

Putting  all  this  together,  with  much  more  of  the 
same  kind,  which  might  be  produced,  but  has  only 
been  indicated  here,  we  should  certainly  gather,  that 
while  there  are  manifest  tokens  as  preserved  in  our 
language,  of  the  Saxon  having  been  for  a  season  an 
inferior  and  even  an  oppressed  race,  the  stable  ele- 
ments of  Anglo-Saxon  life,  however  overlaid  for  a 
while,  had  still  made  good  their  claim  to  be  the 
solid  groundwork  of  the  after  nation  as  of  the  after 
language ;  and  to  the  justice  of  this  conclusion  all 
other  historic  records,  and  the  present  social  condition 
of  England,  consent  in  bearing  testimony. 

What  I  have  here  supposed  might  be  done  in  the 
way  of  reproducing  the  past  history  of  England,  had 
all  records  of  her  earlier  times,  and  of  the  great  so- 
cial changes  of  those  times,  been  entirely  swept  away, 
this  has  been  done  for  the  earlier  history  of  Italy,  of 


LATIN   AND   GREEK   WORDS.  79 

which  the  written  memorials  have  thus  perished,  by 
a  great  modern  historian  of  Rome.  He  draws  most 
important  conclusions  respecting  the  races  which  oc- 
cupied the  Italian  soil,  and  the  relations  in  which 
they  stood  to  one  another,  from  an  analysis  of  the 
words  which  in  the  Latin  language  are  derived  sev- 
erally from  a  Greek  and  from  other  sources.  "  It 
can  not,"  he  says,  "  be  mere  chance  that  the  words 
for  house,  field,  plough,  ploughing,  wine,  oil,  milk, 
kine,  swine,  and  others  relating  to  tillage  and  gen- 
tler ways  of  life  agree  in  Latin  and  in  Greek,  while 
all  objects  appertaining  to  war  or  the  chase  are  des- 
ignated by  words  utterly  un-Grecian."  Hence,  h'e 
draws  the  conclusion  that  this  un-Grecian  popula- 
tion which  has  bequeathed  these  latter  words  stood 
toward  the  Grecian  very  much  in  the  same  relation 
which  we  have  seen  the  Norman,  as  declared  by  the 
consenting  witness  of  history  and  language,  to  have 
occupied  in  respect  of  the  Saxon. 

Thus  far  our  lesson  has  been  derived  from  a  noting 
of  the  relative  proportions  in  which  the  words  of  one 
stock  and  of  another  are  mingled  in  a  language, 
with  the  domains  of  human  activity  to  which  these 
severally  appertain.  But  this  is  not  all ;  there  are 
vast  harvests  of  historic  lore  garnered  often  in  single 
words ;  there  are  continually  great  facts  of  history 
which  they  at  once  declare  and  preserve.  Thus,  for 
instance,  is  it  with  the  word  "  church."  There  can, 


80  THE   HISTORY   IN  WOEDS. 

I  think,  be  no  reasonable  doubt  that  "  church"  is 
originally  from  the  Greek,  and  signifies,  "  that 
which  pertains  to  the  Lord,"  or  "  the  house  which 
is  the  Lord's."  But  here  a  difficulty  meets  us. 
How  explain  the  presence  of  a  Greek  word  in  the 
vocabulary  of  our  Anglo-Saxon  forefathers  ?  for  that 
we  derive  the  word  mediately  from  them,  and  not 
immediately  from  the  Greek,  is  certain.  "What  con- 
tact, direct  or  indirect,  was  there  between  the  lan- 
guages to  account  for  this  ?  The  explanation  is  cu- 
rious. While  the  Anglo-Saxons  and  other  tribes  of 
the  Teutonic  stock  were  almost  universally  convert- 
ed by  their  contact  with  the  Latin  church  in  the 
western  provinces  of  the  Roman  empire,  or  by  its 
missionaries,  yet  it  came  to  pass  that  before  this, 
some  of  the  Goths  on  the  lower  Danube  had  been 
brought  to  the  knowledge  of  Christ  by  Greek  mis- 
sionaries from  Constantinople ;  and  this  word  *up»a*ii 
or  "  church"  did,  with  certain  others,  pass  over  from 
the  Greek  to  the  Gothic  tongue ;  and  these  Goths, 
the  first  converted  to  the  Christian  faith,  the  first, 
therefore,  that  had  a  Christian  vocabulary,  lent  the 
word  in  their  turn  to  the  other  German  tribes,  among 
others  to  our  Anglo-Saxon  forefathers ;  thus  it  has 
come  round  by  the  Goths  from  Constantinople  to  us.* 

*  The  passage  most  illustrative  of  the  parentage  of  the  word  is 
from  Walafrid  Strabo  (about  840)  who  writes  thus:  "  Ab  ipsis  autera 
Grseds  Kyrch  \  Kyrios — et  alia  multa  accepimus.  Sicut  domus 
Dei  Basilica,  i.  e.,  Regia  a  Rege,  sic  etiam  Kyrica,  i.  e.,  Dominica  h 
Domino  nuncupatur.  Si  autem  quseritnr,  qua  occasione  ad  nos  ves- 


PAGAN   AND  PAGANISM.  81 

Or,  again,  examine  the  words  "  pagan"  and  "  pa- 
ganism," and  you  will  find  that  there  is  history  in 
them.  Many  of  us  no  doubt  are  aware  that  the 
word  "  pagani,"  derived  from  "  pagus,"  a  village, 
signifies  properly  the  dwellers  in  hamlets  and  vil- 
lages, as  distinguished  from  the  inhabitants  of  towns 
and  cities;  and  the  word  was  so  used,  and  without 
any  religious  significance,  in  the  earlier  periods  of 
the  Latin  language.  "Pagani"  did  indeed  then  not 
unfrequently  designate  all  civilians,  as  contradistin- 
guished from  the  military  caste ;  and  this  fact  may 
not  have  been  without  its  influence,  when  the  idea 
of  the  faithful  as  soldiers  of  Christ  was  strongly  re- 
alized in  the  minds  of  men.  But  how  mainly  was 
it  that  it  came  first  to  be  employed  as  equivalent  to 
"  heathen,"  and  applied  to  those  yet  alien  from  the 
faith  of  Christ  ?  It  was  in  this  way  :  The  Christian 
church  fixed  itself  first  in  the  seats  and  centres  of 
intelligence,  in  the  towns  and  cities  of  the  Roman 
empire,  and  in  them  its  first  triumphs  were  won; 
while  long  after  these  had  accepted  the  truth,  hea- 
then superstitions  and  idolatries  languished  and 
lingered  on  in  the  obscure  hamlets  and  villages  of 
the  country;  so  that  "pagans,"  or  villagers,  came 
to  be  applied  to  all  the  remaining  votaries  of  the  old 
and  decaying  superstitions,  inasmuch  as  far  the 

tigia  lisec  grcecitatis  advenerint,  dicendum  praecipue  \  Gothis,  qui  et 
Gefee,  cnm  eo  tempore,  quo  ad  fidem  Christ!  perducti  sunt,  in  Grse- 
corum  provinciis  commorantes,  nostrum,  i.  e.,  theotiscum  sennonem 
habuerint" 

4* 


82  THE   HISTORY   IN   WOEDS. 

greater  number  of  them  were  of  this  class.  The 
first  document  in  which  the  word  appears  in  this  its 
secondary  sense  is  an  edict  of  the  emperor  Valen- 
tinian,  of  date  A.  D.  368.  The  word  "  heathen"  ac- 
quired its  meaning  from  exactly  the  same  fact, 
namely,  that  at  the  introduction  of  Christianity  into 
Germany,  the  wild  dwellers  on  the  "  heaths"  longest 
resisted  the  truth.  Here,  then,  are  two  instructive 
notices  for  us  —  first,  the  historic  fact  that  the  church 
of  Christ  did  thus  plant  itself  first  in  the  haunts  of 
learning  and  intelligence ;  and  then  the  more  impor- 
tant moral  fact,  that  it  shunned  not  discussion,  that 
it  feared  not  to  grapple  with  the  wit  and  wisdom  of 
this  world,  or  to  expose  its  claims  to  the  searching 
examination  of  educated  men ;  but,  on  the  contrary, 
had  its  claims  first  recognised  by  them,  and  in  the 
great  cities  of  the  world  won  first  a  complete  triumph 
over  all  opposing  powers.* 

I  quoted  the  words  of  one  in  my  first  lecture,  who, 
magnifying  the  advantage  of  following  up  the  his- 
tory of  a  word,  observed  that  oftentimes  more  would 
be  learned  from  this  than  from  the  history  of  a  cam- 
paign.f  On  the  strength  of  this  assertion  let  us  take 

*  There  is  an  interesting  and  learned  note  upon  the  word  "  pagan" 
in  Gibbon's  Decline  and  Fall,  c.  21,  at  the  end;  and  in  Grimm's 
Deutsche  Mythol.,  p.  1198;  and  the  history  of  the  changes  in  the 
word's  meaning  is  traced  in  another  interest  in  Mill's  Logic,  T.  2,  p. 
271. 

f  Let  me  mention  here,  as  I  shall  not  follow  them  out  in  this  yol- 
nme,  which  is  rather  suggestive  than  anything  else,  the  following 


HISTORY   OF  SACRAMENT.  83 

the  word  "  sacrament,"  and  see  whether  its  history, 
while  it  carries  us  far,  yet  will  not  carry  us  by  ways 
full  of  instruction ;  and  this,  while  we  seek  to  trace 
out  merely  and  strictly  the  world's  histoiy,  not  need- 
lessly mixing  ourselves  with  discussions  in  regard  of 
the  thing,  or  of  its  place  and  importance  in  the  Chris- 
tian scheme.  "We  shall  find  ourselves  first  among 
the  forms  of  Roman  law,  where  the  "  sacramentum" 
first  appears,  as  the  deposite  or  pledge  which  in  cer- 
tain suits  plaintiff  and  defendant  were  alike  bound 
to  make,  and  whereby  they  engaged  themselves  to 
one  another,  the  loser  of  the  suit  forfeiting  his  pledge 
to  sacred  temple-uses,  from  which  fact  the  name 
"  sacramentum,"  or  thing  consecrated,  was  derived. 
The  next  employment  of  the  word  would  plant  us 
amid  the  military  affairs  of  Rome,  "  sacramentum" 
being  applied  to  the  military  oath  with  which  the 
Roman  soldiers  mutually  engaged  themselves  at 
their  first  enlisting  never  to  desert  their  standards, 
or  turn  their  back  upon  the  enemy,  or  abandon  their 
imperator — this  use  of  the  word  teaching  us  the 
sacredness  which  the  Romans  attached  to  their  mili- 
tary engagements,  and  going  far  to  explain  to  us  their 
victories.  The  word  was  then  transferred  from  this 
military  oath  to  any  solemn  oath  whatsoever. 

This,  which  has  hitherto  been  traced,  we  may  call 
the  history  of  the  word,  anterior  to  the  period  when 

words,  "sophist,"  "barbarous,"  "clerk,"  "romance,"  of  which  it 
leems  to  me  eminently  true  that  they  have  such  a  history  as  this. 


84  THE   HISTORY   m   WOBD9. 

it  was  assumed  into  Christian  usage  at  all,  and  these 
three  stages  it  had  already  passed  through,  before 
the  church  claimed  it  for  her  own,  before  indeed  she 
had  herself  come  into  existence.  Her  early  writers, 
out  of  a  sense  of  the  sacredness  and  solemnity  of  the 
oath  among  all  human  transactions,  first  used  the 
word  to  signify  any  sacred  transaction  whatsoever 
that  had  some  special  solemnity  or  sanctity  attached 
to  it,  and  especially  any  mystery  where  more  was 
meant  than  met  the  eye  or  the  ear.  Thus  in  the 
early  church  writers  the  Incarnation  is  a  "  sacra- 
ment," the  lifting  up  of  the  brazen  serpent  is  a  "  sac- 
rament," the  giving  of  the  manna,  and  many  things 
more.  This  period  of  the  word's  history  it  is  very 
expedient  that  we  be  aware  of,  and  acquainted  with 
it ;  for  thus  all  force  is  taken  away  from  the  pas- 
sages quoted  by  Romish  controversialists  in  proof 
of  their  seven  sacraments.  It  is  quite  true  that  the 
early  church  writers  did  entitle  marriage,  and  su- 
preme unction,  and  the  others  which  they  have  add- 
ed, "  sacraments ;"  but  then  they  called  "  sacra- 
ments" or  mysteries  many  things  more,  which  even 
the  theologians  of  Rome  themselves  do  not  pretend 
to  include  in  the  "  sacraments"  properly  so  called  ; 
so  that  the  evidence  here  is  unfortunately  too  good  ; 
proving  too  much,  it  proves  nothing.  But  there  is 
another  stage  in  the  word's  history,  and  that  stage 
the  one  which  concerns  us  the  most  nearly  of  all, 
its  limitation  to  the  two  "  sacraments,"  properly  so 


THE   CRUSADES.  85 

^> 

called,  of  the  Christian  church.  The  remembrance 
of  the  use  of  "  sacrament,"  a  use  which  had  not 
passed  away,  to  signify  the  plighted  troth  of  the  Ro- 
man soldier  to  his  imperator,  was  that,  I  think,  which 
specially  wrought  to  the  adaptation  of  the  word  to 
baptism ;  wherein  we  also,  with  a  manifest  allusion 
to  this  oath  of  theirs,  pledge  ourselves  "to  fight 
manfully  under  Christ's  banner,  and  to  continue  his 
faithful  soldiers  and  servants  to  our  life's  end ;" 
while  the  mysterious  character  of  the  holy  Eucha- 
rist was,  I  believe,  its  especial  point  of  fitness  for 
having  this  name  of  "  sacrament"  applied  to  it. 

I  have  already  sought  to  find  history  embedded 
in  the  word  "  frank ;"  but  I  must  bring  forward  the 
Franks  again,  and  ask  you  to  consider  whether  the 
well-known  fact  that  in  .the  East  not  Frenchmen 
alone,  but  all  Europeans  are  so  called,  does  not  re- 
quiro  to  be  accounted  for  ?  It  can  be  so,  and  this 
wide  usage  of  the  word  is  indeed  a  deep  foot-print 
of  the  past.  This  appellation  dates  from  the  Cru- 
sades, and  Michaud,  the  chief  French  historian  of 
these,  finds  herein,  and  I  think  with  justice,  an  evi- 
dence that  the  French  took  a  decided  lead,  as  their 
gallantry  well  fitted  them  to  do,  in  these  great  ro- 
mantic enterprises  of  the  middle  ages ;  impressed 
themselves  so  strongly  on  the  mind  and  imagination 
of  the  East  as  the  crusading  nation  of  Europe,  that 
their  name  was  extended  to  all  the  warriors  of  the 
"West.  And  remembering  how  large  a  proportion 


86  THE   HISTORY   IN   WORDS. 

cf  the  noblest  Crusaders,  as  well  as  of  others  most 
influential  in  bringing  them  about,  as  Peter  the  Her- 
mit, Urban  the  Second,  St.  Bernard,  were  French, 
it  must  be  allowed  that  the  actual  facts  bear  him 
out  in  his  assertion. 

To  the  Crusades  also,  probably,  and  to  the  intense 
hatred  which  they  roused  throughout  Christendom 
against  the  Mahometan  infidels,  we  owe  "  miscreant," 
in  its  present  sense  of  one  to  whom  we  would  attri- 
bute the  vilest  principles  and  practice.  It  meant  at 
the  first  simply  a  "  misbeliever,"  and  would  have 
been  used  as  freely  and  with  as  little  sense  of  injus- 
tice, of  the  royal-hearted  Saladin  as  of  the  most  in- 
famous wretch  that  fought  in  his  armies.  By  de- 
grees, however,  those  who  employed  it  put  more 
and  more  of  their  feeling  and  passion  into  it,  and 
ever  lost  sight  more  of  its  etymology,  until  they 
would  apply  it  to  any  whom  they  regarded  with 
feelings  of  abhorrence  resembling  those  which  they 
entertained  for  an  infidel ;  just  as  "  Samaritan"  was 
often  employed  by  the  Jews  purely  as  a  term  of  re- 
proach, and  with  no  thought  whether  the  person  on 
whom  it  was  fastened  was  really  sprung  from  that 
mongrel  people  or  not ;  indeed  where  they  were 
quite  sure  that  he  was  not.  The  word  "  assassin," 
also,  the  explanation  of  which  however  we  must  be 
content  to  leave,  belongs  probably  to  a  romantic 
chapter  in  the  history  of  the  Crusades.* 

*  Gibbon's  Decline  and  Fall,  c.  64 


ORIGIN   OF   SAUNTER.  87 

Once  more,  the  words  "  saunter"  and  "  saunterer" 
are  singular  records  of  the  same  events.  "  Saunter- 
et1,"  derived  from  "la  Sainte  Terre,"  is  one  who 
visits  the  Holy  Land.  At  first  a  deep  and  earnest 
enthusiasm  drew  men  thither  to  visit  —  in  the  beau- 
tiful words  which  Shakespere  puts  into  the  mouth 
of  our  Fourth  Henry,  and  which  explain  so  well  the 
attractions  that  at  one  time  made  Palestine  the  mag- 
net of  all  Christendom — to  visit,  I  say — 

"  those  holy  fields, 

Over  whose  acres  walked  those  blessed  feet, 
Which  fourteen  hundred  years  ago  were  nailed 
For  our  advantage  on  the  bitter  cross." 

By  degrees,  however,  as  the  enthusiasm  spent  itself, 
the  making  of  this  pilgrimage  degenerated  into  a 
mere  worldly  fashion,  and  every  idler  that  liked 
strolling  about  better  than  performing  the  duties  of 
his  calling,  assumed  the  pilgrim's  staif,  and  pro- 
claimed himself  bound  for  the  Holy  Land ;  to  which 
very  often  he  never  in  earnest  set  out.  And  thus 
this  word  forfeited  the  more  honorable  meaning  it 
may  once  have  possessed,  and  the  "  saunterer"  came 
to  signify  one  idly  and  unprofitably  wasting  his  time, 
loitering  here  and  there,  with  no  fixed  purpose  or 
aim. 

A  curious  piece  of  history  is  wrapped  up  in  the 
word  "  poltroon,"  supposing  it  to  be  indeed  derived, 
as  many  excellent  etymologists  have  considered, 


88  THE   HISTORY   IN   WORDS. 

from  the  Latin  "  pollice  trancus ;"  one,  that  is  de- 
prived, or  wjio  has  deprived  himself,  of  his  thumb. 
We  know  that  in  the  old  times  a  self-mutilation  of 
this  description  was  not  unfrequent  on  the  part  of 
some  cowardly  shirking  fellow,  who  wished  to  escape 
his  share  in  the  defence  of  his  country ;  he  would 
cut  off  his  right  thumb,  and  at  once  become  incapa- 
ble of  drawing  the  bow,  and  thus  useless  for  the 
wars.  It  was  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  English- 
men, the  men  of  Crecy  and  Agincourt,  who  with 
those  very  bows  which  he  had  disabled  himself  from 
drawing,  had  quelled  the  mailed  chivalry  of  Europe, 
should  have  looked  with  extremest  disdain  on  one 
who  had  so  basely  exempted  himself  from  service, 
nor  that  the  "pollice  truncus,"  the  poltroon,  first 
applied  to  a  coward  of  this  sort,  should  afterward 
become  a  name  of  scorn  affixed  to  every  base  and 
cowardly  evader  of  the  duties  and  dangers  of  life.* 
Our  use  of  the  word  "  caitifi',"  which  is  identical 
with  "  captive,"  only  coming  through  the  Norman 

French,  has,  in  like  manner,  its  rise  out  of  the  sense 

'.  . 

that  he  who  lets  himself  be  made  prisoner  in  war  is 

a  worthless,  good-for-nothing  person — a  feeling  so 

*  See  The  Diversions  of  Purleyi  part  ii,  chap.  2.  —  In  Bonaparte's 
wars  exactly  the  same  thing  happened,  and  young  men  cut  off  not 
now  the  thumb,  but  the  forefinger,  that  which  should  pull  the  trig- 
ger, so  to  escape  being  drawn  for  the  conscription ;  and  travellers 
in  Egypt  tell  us  that  under  the  horrible  tyranny  of  Mehemet  Ali,  a 
great  part  of  the  population  in  some  of  the  Tillages  had  deprived 
themselves  of  the  sight  of  the  right  eye,  that  in  like  manner  they 
might  be  useless  for  war. 


DERIVATION   OF   CARDINAL.  89 

I 

strong  in  some  states  of  antiquity,  that  under  no  cir- 
cumstances would  they  consent  to  ransom  those  of 
their  citizens  who  had  fallen  alive  into  the  hands  of 
the  enemy.  The  captives  were  accounted  "  caitiffs," 
whom  they  could  better  do  without.  The  same  feel- 
ing has  given  us  "  craven,"  a  synonym  for  coward  : 
this  is  one  who  has  craved  or  crcwen  his  life  at  the 
enemies'  hands,  instead  of  resisting  to  the  death. 

Various  derivations  of  "  cardinal"  have  been  pro- 
posed ;  or,  to  speak  more  accurately,  it  has  been 
sought  in  various  ways  to  account  for  the  appropri- 
ating of  this  name  to  the  parochial  clergy  of  the  city 
of  Rome  with  the  subordinate  bishops  of  the  diocese. 
I  believe  the  application  of  the  name  is  an  outgrowth, 
and  itself  a  standing  testimony,  of  the  measureless 
assumptions  of  the  Romish  see.  One  of  the  favorite 
comparisons  by  which  that  see  sought  to  set  out  its 
relation  of  superiority  to  all  the  other  churches  of 
Christendom  was  this  :  it  was  the  "  hinge"  or  "  car- 
do"  on  which  all  the  rest  of  the  church,  as  the  door, 
at  once  depended  and  turned.  It  followed  present- 
ly upon  this  that  the  clergy  of  Rome  were  "  cardi- 
nales,"  as  nearest  and  most  closely  connected  with 
him  who  was  thus  the  "hinge"  or  "  cardo"  of  all.* 

*  Thus  a  letter,  professing  to  be  one  of  Pope  Anacletus  the  First 
in  the  first  century,  but  really  forged  in  the  ninth :  "  Apostolica 
Sedes  cardo  et  caput  omnium  Ecclesiarum  &,  Domino  est  constituta ; 
et  sicut  cardine  ostium  regitiir,  sic  hujus  S.  Sedis  auctoritate  omnes 
Ecclesise  regunttir."  And  we  have  "  cardinal"  put  in  relation  with 
this  "  cardo"  in  a  genuine  letter  of  Pope  Leo  the  Ninth :  "  Clerici 
sunmue  Sedis  Cardinales  diountur,  cardini  utique  illi  quo  csetera  mo 
yentur,  vicinius  adhserentes." 


90  THE    HISTOEY   IN   WORDS. 

There  is  a  little  word  not  in  uncommon  use  among 
us,  an  inquiry  into  the  pedigree  of  which  will  lay 
open  to  us  an  important  page  in  the  intellectual  his- 
tory of  the  world.  We  may  all  know  what  a  "  dunce" 
is,  but  we  may  not  be  as  well  acquainted  with  the 
quarter  whence  the  word  has  been  derived.  Cer- 
tain theologians  in  the  middle  ages  were  termed 
schoolmen ;  being  so  called  because  they  were  formed 
in  the  cloister  and  cathedral  schools  which  Charle- 
magne had  founded — men  not  to  be  lightly  spoken 
of,  as  now  they  often  are  by  those  who  never  read  a 
line  of  their  works,  and  have  not  a  tithe  of  their  wit ; 
who  moreover  little  guess  how  many  of  the  most  fa- 
miliar words  which  they  employ,  or  misemploy, 
have  descended  to  them  from  these.  "  Real,"  "  vir- 
tual," "  entity,"  "  nonentity,"  "  equivocation,"  all 
these,  with  many  more  unknown  to  classical  Latin, 
but  which  now  have  become  almost  necessities,  were 
first  coined  by  the  schoolmen,  and  passing  over 
from  them  into  the  language  of  those  more  or  less 
interested  in  their  speculations,  have  gradually  fil- 
tered through  the  successive  strata  of  society,  till 
now  they  have  reached,  some  of  them,  to  quite  the 
lowest.  At  the  revival  of  learning,  however,  their 
works  fell  out  of  favor:  they  were  not  written  in 
classical  Latin  :  the  form  in  which  their  speculations 
were  thrown  was  often  unattractive ;  it  was  mainly 
in  their  authority  that  the  Romish  church  found 
support  for  many  of  its  periled  dogmas;  on  all 


ORIGIN   OF  DUNCE.  91 

which  accounts,  it  was  considered  a  mark  of  intel- 
lectual progress  and  advance  to  have  broken  with 
them  and  altogether  thrown  off  their  yoke.  Some, 
however,  still  clung  to  these  Schoolmen,  and  to  one 
in  particular,  Duns  Scotus,  the  great  teacher  of  the 
Franciscan  order;  and  many  times  an  adherent  of 
the  old  learning  would  seek  to  strengthen  his  posi- 
tion by  an  appeal  to  its  great  doctor,  familiarly  called 
Duns ;  while  the  others  would  contemptuously  rejoin, 
"  Oh,  you  are  a  Dunsman"  or  more  briefly,  "  You 
are  a  Duns'"  —  or,  "This  is  a  piece  of  dunsery  ;" 
and  inasmuch  as  the  new  learning  was  ever  enlist- 
ing more  and  more  of  the  genius  and  scholarship  of 
the  age  on  its  side,  the  title  became  more  and  more 
a  term  of  scorn :  "  Remember  ye  not,"  says  Tyndal, 
"  how  within  this  thirty  years  and  far  less,  the  old 
barking  curs,  Dunce's  disciples,  and  like  draff  called 
Scotists,  the  children  of  darkness,  raged  in  every 
pulpit  against  Greek,  Latin,  and  Hebrew?"  And 
thus  from  that  long  extinct  conflict  between  the  old 
and  the  new  learning,  that  strife  between  the  medi- 
aeval and  the  modern  theology,  we  inherit  the  words, 
"  dunce,"  and  "  duncery."  Let  us  pause  here  for  a 
moment  to  confess  that  the  lot  of  poor  Duns  was 
certainly  a  hard  one,  who,  whatever  may  have  been 
his  merits  as  a  teacher  of  Christian  truth,  was  cer- 
tainly one  of  the  keenest  and  most  subtle-witted 
of  men.  He,  the  "subtle  doctor"  by  pre-eminence, 
for  so  his  admirers  called  him,  could  hardly  have 


92  THE   HISTORY   IN   WORDS. 

anticipated,  and  as  little  as  any  man  deserved,  that 
his  name  should  be  turned  into  a  by-word  expressive 
of  stupidity  and  obstinate  dullness.  This,  however, 
is  only  one  example  of  the  curious  fortune  of  words. 
We  have  another  singular  example  of  the  same,  and 
of  a  parallel  injustice,  in  the  way  in  which  the  word 
*'  mammetry,"  which  is  a  contraction  of  "  Mahome- 
try,"  is  employed  by  our  early  English  writers. 
Mahometanism  being  the  most  prominent  form  of 
false  religion  with  which  Englishmen  were  acquaint- 
ed, this  word  was  used  up  to  and  beyond  the  Ref- 
ormation, to  designate  first  any  false  religion,  and 
then  the  worship  of  idols  ;  idolatry  being  proper  to, 
and  a  leading  feature  of  most  false  religions.  They 
did  not  pause  to  remember  that  Mahometanism  is 
the  great  exception,  its  most  characteristic  feature 
and  glory  being  its  protest  against  all  idol-worship 
whatsoever  ;  which  being  so,  the  injustice  was  signal 
in  calling  an  idol  a  "  mammet"  or  a  Mahomet,  anfl 
idolatry,  "  mammetry."  To  pursue  the  fortunes  of 
the  word  a  little  further,  another  step  caused  not 
religious  images  only,  but  dolls  to  be  called  "  mam- 
mets;"  and  when  in  Romeo  and  Juliet  Capulet 
contemptuously  styles  his  daughter  "  a  whining 
mammet"  the  process  is  strange,  yet  every  step  of 
it  may  be  easily  traced,  whereby  the  name  of  the 
Arabian  false  prophet  is  fastened  on  the  fair  maiden 
of  Yerona. 

Nor  is  the  true  derivation  of  "  tariff"  unworthy  to 


DERIVATION    OP  TARIFF.  93 

be  traced.  "We  all  know  what  it  means,  namely,  a 
fixed  scale  of  duties,  levied  upon  imports.  If  you 
turn  to  a  map  of  Spain,  you  will  take  note  at  its 
southern  point,  and  running  out  into  the  straits  of 
Gibraltar,  of  a  promontory,  which  from  its  position 
is  admirably  adapted  for  commanding  the  entrance 
of  the  Mediterranean  sea,  and  watching  the  exit  and 
entrance  of  all  ships.  A  fortress  stands  upon  this 
promontory,  called  now,  as  it  was  also  called  in  the 
times  of  the  Moorish  domination  in  Spain,  "  Tarifa ;" 
the  name  indeed  is  of  Moorish  origin.  It  was 
the  custom  of  the  Moors  to  watch  from  this  point  all 
merchant-ships  going  into,  or  coming  out  of,  the  Mid- 
land sea  ;  and  issuing  from  this  stronghold,  to  levy 
duties  according  to  a  fixed  scale  on  all  merchandise 
passing  in  and  out  of  the  straits,  and  this  was  called 
from  the  place  where  it  was  levied,  "  tarifa"  or  "  tar- 
iff ;"  and  in  this  way  we  have  acquired  the  word. 

"  Bigot"  is  another  word  widely  spread  over  Eu- 
rope, of  which  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  we  should 
look  for  the  derivation  where  it  is  not  generally  sought, 
and  that  here  too  we  must  turn  to  Spain  for  the  ex- 
planation. It  has  much  perplexed  inquirers,  and  two 
explanations  of  it  are  current ;  one  of  which  traces  it 
up  to  the  early  Normans,  while  they  yet  retained 
their  northern  tongue,  and  to  their  often  abjuration 
by  the  name  of  God,  with  sometimes  reference  to  a 
famous  scene  in  French  history  in  which  Hollo,  duke 
of  Normandy,  played  a  conspicuous  part ;  the  other 


94.  THE   HISTORY   IN   WORDS. 

puts  it  in  connection  with  "  beguines,"  called  often 
in  Latin  "  beguttse,"  a  name  by  which  certain  com- 
munities of  pietist  women  were  known  in  the  middle 
ages.  Yet  I  can  not  but  think  it  probable  that  rather 
than  to  either  of  these  sources  we  owe  the  word  to 
that  mighty  impression  which  the  Spaniards  began 
to  make  upon  all  Europe  in  the  fifteenth  century,  and 
made  for  a  long  time  after.  Now  the  word  "  big- 
ote,"  means  in  Spanish  "  mustachio ;"  and  as  con- 
trasted with  the  smooth  or  nearly  smooth  upper 
lip  of  most  other  people,  at  that  time  the  Spaniards 
were  the  "  men  of  the  mustachio."  That  it  was 
their  characteristic  feature  comes  out  in  Shakspere's 
Love's  Labor's  Lost,  where  Armado,  the  "  fantastical 
Spaniard,"  describes  the  king  "  his  familiar,  as  some- 
times being  pleased  to  lean  on  his  poor  shoulder,  and 
dally  with  his  mustachio."*  That  'they  themselves 
connected  firmness  and  resolution  with  the  mustachio, 
that  it  was  esteemed  the  outward  symbol  of  these,  is 
plain  from  such  phrases  as  "  hombre  de  bigote,"  a 
man  of  resolution,  "tener  bigotes,"  to  stand  firm. 
But  that  in  which  they  eminently  displayed  their 
firmness  and  resolution  in  those  days  was  their  ad- 
herence to  whatever  the  Roman  see  required  and 
taught.  What  then  more  natural,  or  more  entirely 
according  to  the  law  of  the  generation  of  names,  than 
that  this  striking  and  distinguishing  outward  feature 
of  the  Spaniard  should  have  been  laid  hold  of  to  ex- 
Act  5  8C.  1. 


BIGOT   WHENCE   DEE1VED.  95 

press  that  character  and  condition  which  eminently 
were  his,  and  then  transferred  to  all  others  who  shared 
the  same  ?  The  mustachio  is  in  like  manner  in  France 
a  symbol  of  military  courage ;  and  thus  "  un  vieux 
moustache"  is  an  old  soldier  of  courage  and  military 
bearing.  And  strengthening  this  view,  the  earliest 
use  of  the  word  which  Richardson  gives,  is  a  passage 
from  Bishop  Hall,  where  "  bigot"  is  used  to  signify 
a  pervert  to  Romanism :  "  he  was  turned  both  ~bigot 
and  physician."  In  further  proof  that  the  Spaniard 
was  in  those  times  the  standing  representative  of  the 
bigot  and  the  persecutor,  we  need  but  turn  to  the 
older  editions  of  Fox's  Book  of  Martyrs,  where  the 
pagan  persecutors  of  the  early  Christians  are  usually 
arrayed  in  the  armor  of  Spanish  soldiers,  and  some- 
times graced  with  tremendous  "  bigotes." 

Having  dedicated  this  lecture  to  the  history  which 
is  in  words.  I  can  have  no  fitter  opportunity  of  ur- 
ging upon  you  the  importance  of  seeking  in  every  case 
to  acquaint  yourselves  with  the  circumstances  under 
which  any  body  of  men,  that  have  played  an  impor- 
tant part  in  history,  especially  in  the  history  of  your 
own  land,  obtained  the  name  by  which  they  were 
afterward  willing  to  be  known,  -or  which  was  used 
for  their  designation  by  others.  This  you  may  do  as 
a  matter  of  historical  inquiry,  and  keeping  entirely 
aloof  in  spirit  from  the  scorn,  the  bitterness,  the  false- 
hood the  calumny,  out  of  which  very  often  this  name 


; 

9ft  THE   HISTORY    IN   WOEDS. 

was  first  imposed.  "Whatever  of  this  evil  may  have 
been  at  work  in  them  that  coined,  or  gave  currency 
to,  the  name,  the  name  itself  can  never  be  neglected 
without  serious  loss  by  those  who  would  truly  under- 
stand the  moral  significance  of  the  thing ;  there  is 
always  something,  often  very  much,  to  be  learned 
from  it.  Learn  then  in  regard  of  each  one  of  these 
names  which  you  may  meet  in  your  studies,  whether 
it  was  one  which  men  gave  to  themselves ;  or  one 
imposed  on  them  by  others,  and  which  they  never 
recognised ;  or  one  which  being  first  imposed  by 
others,  was  yet  in  course  of  time  admitted  and  accept- 
ed by  themselves.  We  have  examples  in  all  these 
kinds.  Thus  the  "  gnostics"  called  themselves  such ; 
the  name  was  of  their  own  devising,  and  one  in  which 
they  boasted  :  in  like  manner  the  "  cavaliers"  of  our 
civil  war.*  "Quaker,"  "puritan,"  "roundhead," 
were  all,  on  the  contrary,  names  devised  by  others, 
and  never  accepted  by  them  to  whom  they  were  at- 
tached ;  while  "  whig"  and  "  tory"  were  nicknames 
originally  indeed  of  bitterest  scorn  and  party  hate, 
given  by  two  political  bodies  in  England  to  one  an- 
other^ which,  however,  in  course  of  years  lost  what 
was  offensive  in  them,  until  they  came  to  be  accepted 
and  employed  by  the  very  parties  themselves.  The 
same  we  may  say  of  "  methodist ;"  it  was  certainly 
not  first  taken  by  the  followers  of  Wesley,  but  im- 

*  See  Roger  North's  JExamen.,  p.  321,  for  a  very  lively,  though  not 
a  very  impartial  account,  of  the  rise  of  these  names. 
f  See  Clarendon's  History  of  the  Rebellion,  b.  4. 


NAMES   OF   PARTIES    IMPORTANT.  97 

posed  on  them  by  others,  while  yet  they  have  been 
subsequently  willing  to  accept  and  to  be  known  by  it. 
Now  of  these  titles,  and  of  many  more  that  might 
be  adduced,  some  undoubtedly  had  their  rise  in  mere 
external  accident,  and  stand  in  no  essential  connec- 
tion with  those  that  bear  them  ;  and  these,  although 
not  without  their  instruction,  yet  plainly  are  not  so 
instructive  as  other  names,  in  which  the  innermost 
heart  01  a  system  speaks  out  and  reveals  itself,  so 
that,  having  mastered  the  name,  we  have  placed  our- 
selves at  the  central  point,  and  that  from  which  we 
shall  best  master  everything  besides.  Thus  for  in- 
stance is  it  with  "gnosticism"  and  "gnostic;"  in 
the  prominence  given  to  gnosis^  or  knowledge,  as  op- 
posed to  faith,  lies  the  key  to  the  whole  system.  And 
I  may  say  generally  that  almost  all  the  sects  and 
parties,  religious  and  political,  which  have  risen  up 
in  times  past  in  England,  are  known  by  names  that 
will  repay  study ;  an  entering  into  which  will  bring 
us  far  in  the  understanding  of  their  strength  and 
their  weakness,  their  truth  and  their  error,  the  idea 
and  intention  according  to  which  they  wrought.  "  Pu- 
ritans," "  fifth-monarchy  men,"  "  seekers,"  "  indepen- 
dents," "friends,"  " latitudinarians,"  these  titles  with 
many  more  have  each  its  significance ;  and  would 
you  understand  what  they  meant,  you  must  first  un- 
derstand what  they  were  called.  From  this  must 
be  your  point  of  starting,  even  as  to  this  you  must 
bring  back  whatever  later  information  you  may  gain ; 

5 


98  THE   HISTOKY   IN   WOEDS. 

and,  though  I  will  not  say  that  you  must  always  sub- 
ordinate it  to  the  name,  yet  must  you  ever  put  it  in 
relation  and  connection  with  that. 

You  will  often  be  able  to  glean  knowledge  from 
the  names  of  things,  if  not  as  important  as  that  I 
have  just  been  speaking  of,  yet  curious  and  interest- 
ing. What  a  record  of  invention  is  presented  in  the 
names  which  so  many  articles  bear,  of  the  place  from 
which  they  first  came,  or  the  person  by  whom  they 
were  first  invented.  The  "bayonet"  tells  us  that  it 
was  first  made  at  Bayonne — "cambrics"  that  they 
came  from  Cambray — "  damask"  from  Damascus — 
"arras"  from  the  city  of  the  same  name  —  "cord- 
wain"  or  " cordova"  from  Cordova — "currants" 
from  Corinth — the  "guinea,"  that  it  was  originally 
coined  of  gold  brought  from  the  African  coast  so 
called  —  "  camlet"  that  it  was  woven,  at  least  in  part, 
of  camel's  hair.  Such  has  been  the  manufacturing 
progress  of  England  that  we  now  send  our  calicoes 
and  muslins  to  India  and  the  east ;  yet  the  words  giv^ 
standing  witness  that  we  once  imported  them  thence ; 
for  "calico"  is  from  Calicut,  and  "muslin"  from 
Moussul,  a  city  in  Asiatic  Turkey. 

It  is  true  indeed  that  occasionally  names  embody 
and  give  permanence  to  an  error ;  as  when  in  the 
name  "  America"  the  honor  of  discovering  the  New 
World,  which  belonged  to  Columbus,  has  been 
transferred  to  another  eminent  discoverer,  but  to 
one  who  had  no  title  to  this  praise,  and  who  did  not, 


- 

MISTAKES    EMBODIED   IN   NAMES.  99 

as  has  been  lately  abundantly  shown,  by  any  means 
desire  to  claim  it  for  himself.  '  So,  too,  the  "  turkey" 
in  our  farm-yards  seems  to  claim  Turkey  for  its 
home ;  and  the  assumption  that  it  was  thence  no 
doubt  caused  it  to  be  so  called ;  while  indeed  it 
was  unknown  in  Europe  until  introduced  from  the 
New  "World,  where  alone  it  is  indigenous.  This 
error  the  French  in  another  shape  repeat,  calling  it 
"  dinde,"  which  was  originally  "  poulet  d?Inde"  or, 
Indian  fowl.  In  like  manner  "  gypsies"  appears  to 
imply  that  Egypt  was  the  country  to  which  these 
wanderers  originally  belonged,  and  from  which  they 
had  migrated  westward  ;  and  certainly  it  was  so  be- 
lieved in  many  parts  of  Europe  at  their  first  appear- 
ance in  the  beginning  of  the  fifteenth  century,  and 
hence  this  title.  It  is  now  however  clearly  made 
out,  their  language  leaving  no  doubt  of  the  fact,  that 
they  are  an  outcast  tribe,  which  has  wandered  hither 
from  a  more  distant  land,  from  India  itself.  "  Bo- 
hemians," which  is  the  French  appellation  of  gypsies, 
involves  an  error  similar  to  ours.  They  were  taken 
at  first  by  the  common  people  in  France  to  be  the 
expelled  Hussites  of  Bohemia,  and  hence  this  name. 
In  the  German  "  zigeuner"  there  is  no  expression 
of  the  land  from  which  they  were  assumed  to  have 
come,  but  if  this  word  be  "  zieh-gauner,"  roaming 
thieves,  it  will  then  indicate  the  evil  repute  in  which 
from  the  very  beginning  they  were  held. 

And  where  words  have  not,  as  in  these  cases,  em- 


100  THE   HISTOBY   IN   WOBDS. 

bodied  an  error,  it  will  yet  sometimes  happen  that 
the  sound  or  spelling  of  a  word  will  to  us  possibly 
suggest  a  wrong  explanation,  against  which  in  these 
studies  it  will  need  to  be  on  our  guard.  I  dare  say 
that  there  has  been  a  stage  in  most  boys'  geographi- 
cal knowledge,  when  they  have  taken  for  granted 
that  Jutland  was  so  called,  not  because  it  was  the 
land  of  the  Jutes,  but  on  account  of  its  jutting  out 
into  the  sea  in  so  remarkable  a  manner.  And  there 
have  not  been  wanting  those  who  have  ventured  to 
trace  in  the  name  "Jove"  a  heathen  reminiscence 
of  the  awful  name  of  Jehovah.  I  will  not  enter  into 
this  here ;  sufficient  to  say  that,  however  specious 
this  at  first  sight  may  seem,  yet  on  closer  examina- 
tion of  the  two  words,  every  connection  between 
them  disappears. 

Sometimes  the  assumed  derivation  has  reacted 
upon  and  modified  the  spelling.  Thus  the  name  of 
the  Caledonian  tribe  whom  we  call  the  "Picts," 
would  probably  have  come  down  to  us  in  a  some- 
what different  form,  but  for  the  assumption  which 
early  rose  up,  that  they  were  so  called  from  their 
custom  of  staining  or  painting  their  bodies,  that  in 
fact  "  Picts"  meant  "  the  painted."  This,  as  is  now 
acknowledged,  is  an  exceedingly  improbable  suppo- 
sition. It  would  be  quite  conceivable  that  the  Ro- 
mans should  have  given  this  name  to  the  first  bar- 
barous tribe  they  encountered,  who  were  in  the  habit 
of  painting  themselves  thus ;  such  a  custom,  forcing 


FAULTY   ETYMOLOGY.  101 

itself  on  the  eye,  and  impressing  itself  on  tlie  imagi- 
nation, is  exactly  that  which  gives  birth  to  a  name : 
but  after  they  had  been  long  familiar  witB  the  tribes 
in  southern  Britain,  to  whom  this  painting  or  tattoo- 
ing was  equally  familiar,  it  is  quite  inconceivable 
that  they  should  have  applied  it  to  one  of  the  nor- 
thern tribes  in  the  island,  with  whi  h  they  first 
came  in  contact  at  a  far  later  day.  The  name  is 
much  more  probably  the  original  Celtic  one  belong- 
ing to  the  tribe,  slightly  altered  in  the  mouths  of  the 
Romans.  —  It  may  have  been  the  same  with  "  hurri- 
cane ;"  for  many  have  imagined  that  this  word,  be- 
ing used  especially  to  signify  the  "West  Indian  tor- 
nado, must  be  derived  from  the  tearing  up  and  hur- 
rying away  of  the  canes  in  the  sugar  plantations, 
just  in  the  same  way  as  the  Latin  "  calamitas"  has 
been  drawn,  but  erroneously,  from  "  calamus,"  the 
stalk  of  the  corn.  In  both  cases  the  etymology  is 
faulty ;  "  hurricane"  is  only  a  transplanting  into  our 
tongue  of  the  Spanish  "  hurracan"  or  the  French 
"  ouragan."* 

*  One  or  two  words  more  I  will  mention  here,  in  which  a  falsely 
imagined  etymology  has  certainly  gone  so  far  as  often,  if  not  always, 
to  influence  the  spelling.  How  could  the  h,  for  example,  have  ever 
found  its  way  into  "  posthumous,"  but  for  the  erroneous  assumption 
that  it  had  something  to  do  with  post  humum,  instead  of  being  the 
superlative  of  "posterus"?  "Surname,"  too,  is  spelled  by  many  with 
an  i,  as  if  it  were  "  sire"-name,  the  family  name  in  contradistinction 
to  the  personal  or  Christian,  when  indeed  it  is  the  name  over  and 
above  ("sur"  for  "super"),  as  I  shall  have  occasion  to  note  in  a  later 
lecture.  "Shamefaced,"  too,  was  once  " eh&mcfast"  "shamefaced- 
ness  was  " shame/asftiess,"  like  "stead/as^"  and  "stoad/as^ness:"  but 


102  THE   HISTORY   IN   WORDS. 

It  is  a  signal  evidence  of  the  conservative  powers 
of  language,  that  we  may  oftentimes  trace  in  speed) 
the  record!;  of  customs  and  states  of  society  which 
have  now  passed  so  entirely  away  as  to  survive  no- 
where else  but  in  these  words  alone.  For  example, 
a  "stipulation,"  or  agreement,  is  so  called,  as  many 
are  strong  to  affirm,  from  "  stipula,"  a  straw,  because 
it  once  was  usual,  when  one  person  passed  over 
landed  property  to  another,  that  a  straw  from  the 
land,  as  a  pledge  or  representative  of  the  property 
transferred,  should  be  handed  from  the  seller  to  the 
buyer,  which  afterward  was  commonly  preserved 
with,  or  inserted  in  the  title-deeds.  And  we  all 
know  how  important  a  fact  of  English  history  is  laid 
up  in  "curfew"  or  " couvre-feu."  Nor  need  I  do 
more  than  remind  you  that  in  our  common  phrase 
of  "  signing  our  name,"  we  preserve  a  record  of  a 
time  when  the  first  rudiments  of  education,  such  as 
the  power  of  writing,  were  the  portion  of  so  few,  that 
it  »vas  not  as  now  the  exception,  but  the  custom  for 
most  persons  to  make  their  mark  or  "  sign,"  great 
barons  and  kings  themselves  not  being  ashamed  to 
set  this  sign  or  cross  to  the  weightiest  documents. 

the  ordinary  manifestations  of  shame  being  by  the  face,  have  brought 
it  to  its  present  orthography ;  it  was  '  shame/ostoess"  at  1  Tim.  ii.  9, 
in  the  first  edition  (1611)  of  the  authorized  version,  and  certainly 
ought  not  to  have  been  altered.  In  Latin  the  same  has  occurred 
with  "  orichalcum,"  spelled  often  "  aurichalcum,"  as  though  it  were 
i  composite  metal  of  mingled  gold  and  brass.  It  is  indeed  the  maun 
tain  brass,  djOsi^aAwj. 


EXPLODED   THEORIES    IN   WORDS.  103 

The  more  accurate  language  by  which  to  express 
what  now  we  do,  would  be  to  speak  of  "  subscribing 
the  name."  Then,  too,  whenever  we  speak  of  arith- 
metic as  the  science  of  "  calculation,"  we  in  fact 
allude  to  that  rudimental  period  of  the  science  of 
numbers,  when  pebbles  (calculi)  were  used,  as  now 
among  savages  they  often  are,  to  facilitate  the  prac- 
tice of  counting.  In  "  library"  we  preserve  a  record 
of  the  fact  that  books  were  once  written  on  the  bark 
(liber)  of  trees,  as  in  "  paper,"  of  a  somewhat  later 
period,  when  the  Egyptian  papyrus,  "the  paper 
reeds  by  the  brooks,"  furnished  the  chief  material 
employed  in  writing. 

Theories,  too,  which  long  since  were  utterly  re- 
nounced, have  yet  left  their  traces  behind  them. 
Thus  the  words  "  good  humor,"  "  bad  humor,"  "  hu- 
morous," and  the  like,  rest  altogether  on  a  now-ex- 
ploded, but -a  very  old  and  widely-extended  theory 
of  medicine ;  according  to  which  there  were  four 
principal  moistures  or  "  humors"  in  the  natural 
body,  on  the  due  proportion  and  combination  of 
which  the  disposition  alike  of  body  and  of  mind  de- 
pended.* And  "  temper,"  as  used  by  us  now,  has 
its  origin  in  the  same  theory;  the  due  admixture,  or 
right  "  tempering,"  of  these  gave  what  was  called 
the  happy  "  temper,"  which,  thus  existing  inwardly, 
manifested  itself  also  outwardly.  In  the  same  man- 
ner "  distemper,"  which  we  still  employ  in  the  sense 

*  See  the  Prologue  to  Ben  Jon  son's  Every  Man  out  of  his  Humor. 


104  THE    HISTORY   IN   WOKDS. 

of  sickness,  was  that  evil  frame  either  of  a  man's 
body  or  of  his  mind  (for  it  was  used  alike  of  both), 
which  had  its  rise  in  an  unsuitable  mingling  of  these 
humors.  In  these  instances,  as  in  many  more,  the 
great  streams  of  thought  and  feeling  have  changed 
their  course,  and  now  flow  in  quite  other  channels 
from  those  which  once  they  filled,  but  have  left 
these  words  as  lasting  memorials  of  the  channels 
in  which  once  they  ran. 

Other  singular  examples  we  have  of  the  way  in 
which  the  record  of  old  errors,  themselves  exploded 
long  ago,  may  yet  survive  in  language — the  words 
that  grew  into  use  when  those  errors  found  credit, 
maintaining  still  their  currency  among  us.  The 
mythology,  for  example,  which  our  ancestorsbrought 
with  them  from  the  forests  of  Germany  is  as  much 
extinct  for  us  as  are  the  Lares,  Larvae,  and  Lemures 
of  heathen  Rome;  yet  the  deposite  it  has  permanent- 
ly left  in  the  language  is  not  inconsiderable.  " Lub- 
ber," "  dwarf,"  "  oaf,"  "  droll,"  "  hag,"  "  nightmare," 
suggest  themselves  at  once,  as  belonging  to  the  old 
Teutonic  demonology.  Thus,  too,  no  one  now  be- 
lieves in  astrology,  that  the  planet  under  which  a 
man  may  happen  to  be  born  will  affect  his  tempera- 
ment, will  make  him  for  life  of  a  disposition  grave 
or  gay,  lively  or  severe.  Yet  we  seem  to  affirm  as 
much  in  language,  for  we  speak  of  a  person  as  "jovi- 
al, "  or  "saturnine,"  or  "mercurial"  —  "jovial,  "as- 
being  born  under  the  planet  Jupiter  or  Jove,  which 


WOEDS   NOT   CONTEOLLED   BY    ORIGIN.  105 

was  the  joyfullest  star;  and  of  the  happiest  augury 
of  all :  a  gloomy,  severe  person,  is  said  to  be  "  staur- 
nine,"  as  born  under  the  planet  Saturn,  who  was 
considered  to  make  those  that  owned  his  influence, 
and  were  born  when  he  was  in  the  ascendant,  grave 
and  stern  as  himself;  another  we  call "  mercurial," 
that  is  light-hearted,  as  those  bom  under  the  planet 
Mercury  were  accounted  to  be.  The  same  faith  in 
the  influence  of  the  stars  survives,  so  far  at  least  as 
words  go,  in  "disaster,"  "disastrous,"  "ill-starred," 
"ascendant,"  "ascendency,"  and,  indeed,  in  the 
word  "  influence"  itself.  What  curious  legends  be- 
long to  the  explanation  of  the  "  sardonic  laugh ;" 
to  the  "topaz,"  so  called,  as  some  said,  because 
men  were  only  able  to  conjecture  (TOTO^)  the  place 
whence  it  was  brought,  and  to  innumerable  other 
of  the  words  employed  by  us  still. 

But  here  a  question  presents  itself,  one  which 
might  at  first  sight  seem  merely  speculative,  yet 
which  is  not  altogether  so ;  for  it  has  before  now  be- 
come a  veritable  case  of  conscience  with  some  wheth- 
er they  ought  to  use  words  which  originally  rested 
on,  and  so  seem  to  affirm,  some  superstition  or  un- 
truth. This  question  has  practically  settled  itself; 
they  will  keep  their  ground ;  but  they  also  ought. 
It  is  not  of  necessity  that  a  word  should  always  be 
considered  to  root  itself  in  its  etymology,  and 
to  draw  its  life-blood  thence.  It  may  so  detach 
itself  from  this  as  to  have  a  right  to  be  regarded  in- 

5* 


106  THE    HISTORY   IN   WORDS. 

dependency  of  it :  and  thus  our  weekly  newspapers 
commit  no  aosurdity  in  calling  themselves  "jour- 
nals ;"  we  involve  ourselves  in  no  real  contradiction, 
speaking  of  a  "  quarantine"  of  five,  ten,  or  any  num- 
ber of  days  more  or  fewer  than  forty.  Thus,  too,  I 
remember  once  asking  a  class  of  children  in  a  school, 
whether  an  announcement  which  during  one  very 
hard  winter  appeared  in  the  papers,  of  a  "  white 
J^c^bird"  having  been  shot,  was  correctly  worded, 
or  self-contradictory  and  absurd.  The  less  thought- 
ful members  of  the  class  instantly  pronounced 
against  it;  while  after  some  little  consideration, 
some  two  or  three  perceived  and  replied  that  it  was 
perfectly  correct,  that  while  no  doubt  the  bird  had 
originally  obtained  this  name  from  its  blackness, 
yet  was  it  now  the  name  of  a  species,  and  a  name 
which  so  cleaved  to  it,  as  not  to  be  forfeited  even 
when  the  blackness  had  ceased  altogether  to  exist. 
We  do  not  question  the  right  of  the  "  New  Forest" 
still  to  be  so  called,  though  it  has  now  stood  for  nigh 
eight  hundred  years. 

It  must  then  be  esteemed  a  piece  of  ethical  pru- 
dery, and  an  ignorance  of  the  laws  which  govern 
words  and  their  uses,  in  the  early  quakers,  when 
they  refuse-  to  employ  the  names  commonly  given 
to  the  days  of  the  week,  and  substituted  for  these 
"  first  day,"  "  second  day,"  and  so  on  ;  which  they 
did,  as  is  well  known,  on  the  ground  that  it  became 
not  Christian  men  to  give  so  much  sanction  to  idola- 


QUAKER   PRUDERY   ABOUT   WORDS.  107 

try  as  was  involved  in  the  ordinary  style — as  though 
every  time  they  spoke  of  Wednesday  they  would  be 
I  doing  some  honor  to  Woden,  of  Thursday  to  Thor, 
of  Friday  to  Freya,  and  thus  with  the  rest.  But 
these  names  of  the  days  of  the  week  had  long  left 
their  etymologies  behind,  and  quite  disengaged  them- 
selves from  them.  Moreover,  had  these  precisians 
in  speech  been  consistent,  they  could  not  have  stopped 
where  they  did ;  every  new  acquaintance  with  the 
derivation  or1  primary  use  of  words  would  have  en- 
tangled them  in  new  embarrassment,  would  have  re- 
quired them  still  further  to  purge  their  vocabulary. 
"  To  charm,"  "  to  bewitch,"  "  to  fascinate,"  "  to  en- 
chant," would  have  been  no  longer  lawful  words  for 
those  who  had  outlived  the  belief  in  magic,  and  in 
the  power  of  the  evil  eye ;  nor  "  lunacy,"  nor  "  luna- 
tic," for  such  as  did  not  believe  that  the  moon  had 
anything  to  do  with  mental  unsoundness.  Nay,  they 
must  have  found  fault  with  the  language  of  Holy 
Scripture  itself;  for  in  the  New  Testament  there  is  a 
word  in  very  honorable  use  expressing  a  function  that 
might  be  exercised  by  the  faithful,  that,  namely,  of 
an  interpreter,  which  word  is  yet  directly  derived 
from  Hermes,  a  heathen  deity,  and  a  deity,  who  did 
not,  like  Woden,  Thor,  and  Freya,  pertain  to  a  long 
extinct  mythology,  but  to  one  existing  at  that  very 
moment  in  its  strength.  And  how  was  it,  we  may 
ask,  that  Paul  did  not  protest  against  a  Christian 


108  THE   HISTORY    IN   WOEDS. 

woman  retaining  the  name  of  Phoebe  (Rom.  xvi.  1), 
a  goddess  of  the  same  mythology  ? 

That  which  has  been  spoken  in  this  lecture  will,  I 
trust,  abundantly  justify  the  comparison  with  which 
I  would  conclude  it.  Suppose,  then,  that  the  pieces 
of  money  which,  in  the  ordinary  intercourse  of  life, 
are  passing  through  our  hands,  had  each  one  some- 
thing of  its  own  which  made  it  more  or  less  worthy 
of  note ;  if  on  one  was  stamped  some  striking  max- 
im, on  another  some  important  fact,  on  a  third  a 
memorable  date ;  if  others  were  works  of  finest  art, 
graven  with  rare  and  beautiful  devices,  or  bearing 
the  head  of  some  ancient  sage  or  heroic  king ;  while 
others  again  were  the  sole  surviving  monuments  of 
mighty  nations  that  once  filled  the  world  with  their 
fame ;  what  a  careless  indifference  to  our  own  im- 
provement would  it  arguei  in  us,  if  we  were  content 
that  these  should  come  and  go,  should  stay  by  us  or 
pass  from  us,  without  our  vouchsafing  to  them  so 
much  as  one  serious  regard.  Such  a  currency  there 
is,  a  currency  intellectual  and  spiritual  of  no  meaner 
worth,  and  one  with  which  we  have  to  transact  so 
much  of  the  higher  business  of  our  lives.  Let  us  see 
that  we  come  not  here  under  the  condemnation  of 
any  such  incurious  dullness  as  that  which  I  have 
imagined. 


LECTURE   IV. 

THE   RISE   OF   NEW   WORDS. 

ONE  of  the  most  interesting  branches  of  the  study 
which  is  occupying  us  now  is  the  taking  note  of  the 
periods  when  great  and  and  significant  words,  or,  it 
may  be,  even  such  as  can  hardly  claim  those  epithets, 
have  risen  up  and  come  into  use,  with  the  circum- 
stances attending  their  rise.  The  different  portions 
of  my  theme  so  run  into  one  another,  that  this  is  a 
subject  which  I  have,  though  unwillingly,  already 
anticipated  in  part;  yet  is  it  one  so  curious,  and 
which,  I  believe,  may  be  made  so  instructive,  that  I 
purpose  to  dedicate  a  lecture  exclusively  to  it.  In- 
deed, I  am  persuaded  that  a  little  volume  might  be 
constructed,  which  few  of  its  size  would  rival  in 
interest,  that  should  do  no  more  than  indicate,  or, 
where  advisable,  give  a  quotation  from,  the  first 
writer  or  the  first  document  in  which  new  words,  or 
old  words  employed  in  a  new  sense — such,  I  mean, 
as  have  afterward  played  a  more  or  less  important 
part  in  the  world's  history — have  appeared.  For 
the  feeling  wherewith  one  watches  the  rise  above  the 
horizon  of  these  words,  some  of  them  to  shine  for 


110  THE   KISE   OF   NEW   WOEDS. 

ever  as  luminaries  in  the  moral  and  intellectual 
heaven  above  us,  can  oftentimes  be  only  likened  to 
that  which  the  poet  so  grandly  describes,  of — 

"some  watcher  of  the  skies, 
When  a  new  planet  swims  into  his  ken." 

I  would  instance  of  words  religious  and  eccle- 
siastical such  as  these — "Christian,"*  " trinity ;"f 
"  catholic,"  as  an  epithet  applied  to  the  church ;  $ 
"  canonical,"  as  a  distinctive  characteristic  of  the 
received  Scriptures ;  §  "  IsTew  Testament,"  as  ex- 
pressing the  complex  of  the  sacred  books  of  the  new 
covenant ;  |  "  gospels,"  as  applied  to  the  four  in- 
spired records  of  the  life  of  our  Lord;^[  or  again, 
historical  and  geographical,  as  the  first  mention 
of  India ;  **  the  first  emerging  of  the  names  "  Ger- 
many" and  the  "  Germans ;"  ff  the  earliest  mention 
of  Rome  in  any  writer ;  $+  or  when  the  entire  Hes- 
perian peninsula  Acquired  the  title  of  "  Italy,"  which 
had  been  gradually  creeping  up  for  centuries  from 
its  southern  extremity  ;§§  when  Asia  on  this  side 

*  First  in  Acts  xL  26. 

f  First  in  Tertullian,  Adv.  Prax.,  c.  8. 

\  First  by  Ignatius,  Ad.  Smyr.,  c.  8. 

§  Origen,  Opp.  v.  3,  p.  36.  (Ed.  de  la  Rue.) 

|  Tertullian,  Adv.  Marc.,  iy.  1 ;  Adv.  Prax.,  15,  20. 

^[  Justin  Martyr,  Apol.  L  66. 

**  ^Eschylus,  Suppl.,  282. 

ff  They  probably  first  occur  in  the  writings  of  Caesar. 

\\.  Probably  in  Hellanicus,  a  contemporary  of  Herodotus. 

g§  In  the  time  of  Augustus  Caesar.  Merivale  (Hist,  of  the  Rom., 
V.  8.  p.  157)  notices  what  he  believes  the  first  use  of  it  which  has 
come  down  to  us  in  this  its  widest  sense. 


HISTOEY   OF   TYRANT.  Ill 

Taurus  was  first  called  "Asia  Minor  ;"*  the  earliest 
notice  which  we  have  of  the,  "Normans,"  under 
this  title  ;"f  who  first  gave  to  the  newly-discovered 
continent  in  the  west  the  name  of  "America,"  and 
when ;  £  the  period  when  this  island  exchanged  its 
earlier  name  of  "  Britain"  for  its  new  one  of  "An- 
glia,"  or,  "  England ;"  or,  again,  when  it  resumed 
"  Great  Britain,"  as  its  official  designation ;  so,  too, 
to  go  back  in  the  world's  history,  and  to  take  one  or 
two  examples  of  a  different  character — at  what 
moment  the  words  "  tyrant"  and  "  tyranny,"  marking 
so  distinct  an  epoch  as  they  do  in  the  political  history 
of  Greece,  first  appeared ;  §  when  and  from  whom 

*  The  name  first  occurs  in  Orosius,  i.  2;  that  is,  in  the  fifth 
century  of  our  sera. 

f  In  the  Geographer  of  Ravenna. 

\  Alexander  von  Humboldt,  who  has  studied  the  question  closely, 
ascribes  its  general  reception  to  its  having  been  introduced  into 
a  popular  and  influential  work  on  geography,  published  in  1507. 

§  First  in  the  writings  of  Archilochus,  about  B.  C.  700.  I  will  just 
observe,  that  "tyrant,"  with  the  Greeks,  had  a  much  deeper  sense 
than  it  has  in  our  modern  use.  The  difference  between  a  king  and  a 
tyrant  was  much  more  deeply  apprehended  by  them  than  by  us.  A 
tyrant  was  not  a  bad  king,  one  who  abused  the  advantages  of  a  right- 
ful position  to  purposes  of  lust,  or  cruelty,  or  other  oppression ;  but  it 
was  of  the  essence  of  the  tyrant  that  he  attained  supreme  dominion 
through  a  violation  of  the  laws  and  liberties  of  the  state,  and  such 
a  one,  'A  ith  whatever  moderation  he  might  afterward  exercise  his 
rule,  would  not  the  less  retain  the  name.  Thus,  the  mild  and 
bounteous  Pisistratus  was,  and  was  called,  "tyrant"  of  Athens; 
while  a  Christian  the  Second,  of  Denmark,  would  not  have  been 
esteemed  such  in  their  eyes.  It  was  to  the  honor  of  the  Greeks  that 
they  did  not  allow  the  course  of  the  word  to  be  arrested  or  turned 
aside  by  any  occasional  or  partial  exceptions  in  the  manner  of  the 
after-exercise  of  this  ill-gotten  dominion,  but  in  the  hateful  secondary 


112  THE   EISE   OF   NEW   WOBD9. 

the  fabric  of  the  external  universe  first  received  the 
title  of  "cosmos,"  or,  "beautiful  order;"*  with 
many  more  of  the  same  description. 

Of  these  which  I  have  just  adduced  let  us  take, 
by  way  of  sample,  two,  and  try  whether  there  is  not 
much  to  be  gathered  from  them,  and  from  attending 
to  the  epoch  and  circumstances  of  their  rise.  Our 
first  example  is  a  remarkable  one,  for  it  shows  us  the 
Holy  Spirit  himself,  counting  a  name,  and  the  rise 
of  a  name  of  so  much  importance  as  to  make  it 
matter  of  special  record  in  the  Book  of  Life.  "The 
disciples  were  called  Christians  first  in  Antioch." 
(Acts  xi.  26.)  This  might  seem  at  first  sight  a  notice 
curious  and  interesting,  as  all  must  possess  interest 
for  us  which  relates  to  the  early  days  of  the  church, 
but  nothing  more.  And  yet  in  truth  how  much 
of  history  is  enfolded  in  this  name ;  what  light  it 
throws  on  the  early  history  of  Christianity  to  know 
when  and  where  it  was  first  imposed  on  the  faithful 
— "imposed,"  I  say,  for  it  is  clearly  a  name  which 

sense  which  the  word  even  with  them  acquired,  and  which  is  felt 
still  more  strongly  by  us,  the  moral  conviction,  justified  by  all 
experience,  spake  out,  that  what  was  gotten  by  fraud  and  violence 
would  only  by  the  same  methods  be  retained;  that  the  "tyrant/'  in 
the  earlier  Greek  sense  of  the  word,  dogged  as  he  would  L  ^  by  sus- 
picion, fear,  and  an  evil  conscience,  must  also  by  a  sure  lltw  become 
a  "tyrant in  the  later,  which  is  that  in  which  alone  we  employ  the 
word.  The  present  ruler  of  France,  in  the  manner  in  which  he  got 
his  power,  and  in  the  manner  in  which  he  wields  it^  caste  the 
broadest  light  on  the  whole  history  of  the  word. 

*  The  word  is  ascribed,  as  is  well  known,  to  Pythagoras,  born 
about  B.  C.  570. 


ORIGIN   OF   THE   NAME   CHEISTIAN.  113 

they  did  not  give  to  themselves,  but  received  from 
their  adversaries,  however  afterward  they  may  have 
learned  to  accept  it  as  a  title  of  honor,  and  to  glory 
in  it.  For  it  is  not  said  that  they  "  called  themselves" 
but  "  were  called"  Christians  first  at  Antioch  ;  nor 
do  we  find  the  name  anywhere  in  scripture  except 
on  the  lips  of  those  alien  from,  or  opposed  to,  the 
gospel.  (Acts  xxvi.  28 ;  1  Pet.  iv.  16.)  And  as  it 
was  a  name  imposed  by  adversaries,  so  among  those 
adversaries  it  was  plainly  the  heathen,  and  not  the 
Jews,  that  gave  it;  since  the  Jews  would  never 
have  called  the  followers  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth, 
"  Christians,"  or  "  those  of  Christ,"  seeing  that  the 
very  point  of  their  opposition  to  him  was,  that  he 
was  not  the  Christ,  but  a  false  pretender  to  this 
name. 

Starting  then  from  this  point,  that  ''  Christians" 
was  a  name  given  to  the  early  disciples  by  the 
heathen,  let  us  see  what  we  may  learn  from  it, 
ISTow  we  know  that  Antioch  was  the  headquarters 
of  the  earliest  missions  to  the  heathen,  even  as 
Jerusalem  was  to  those  of  the  seed  of  Abraham.  It 
was  there  and  among  the  faithful  there  that  the 
sense  of  the  world-wide  destination  of  the  gospel 
arose ;  there  it  was  first  plainly  seen  as  intended  for 
all  kindreds  of  the  earth.  Hitherto  the  faithful  in 
Christ  had  been  called  by  their  enemies,  and  in- 
deed often  were  still  called,  "  Galileans,"  or  "  ISTaza- 
renes"— both  names  which  indicated  the  Jewish 


114  THE    RISE   OF   NEW   WORDS. 

cradle  in  which  the  gospel  had  been  nursed,  and 
that  the  world  saw  in  it  no  more  than  a  Jewish  sect. 
But  the  name  "  Christians,"  or  "  those  of  Christ," 
imposed  upon  them  now,  while  it  indicated  that 
Christ  and  the  confession  of  his  name  was  felt  even 
by  the  world  to  b,e  the  sum  and  centre  of  their  reli- 
gion, showed  also  that  the  heathen  had  now  come  to 
comprehend,  I  do  not  say  what  the  church  would  be, 
but  what  it  claimed  to  be — no  mere  variety  of  Ju- 
daism, but  a  society  with  a  world-wide  mission ;  it 
is  clear  that,  when  this  name  was  given,  the  church, 
even  in  the  world's  eyes,  had  chipped  its  Jewish 
shell.  Nor  will  the  attentive  reader  fail  to  observe 
that  the  imposing  of  this  name  on  believers  is  by 
closest  juxtaposition  connected  in  the  sacred  narra- 
tive, and  still  more  closely  in  the  Greek  than  in  the 
English,  with  St.  Paul's  first  arrival  at  Antioch,  and 
preaching  there ;  he  being  the  especial  and  appoint- 
ed instrument  for  bringing  the  church  into  the  rec- 
ognition of  this  its  destination  for  all  men.  As  so 
often  happens  with  the  rise  of  a  new  name,  the  rise 
of  this  one  marked  a  new  epoch  in  the  church's  life, 
its  entrance  upon  a  new  stage  of  its  development. 

It  is  a  merely  subordinate  matter,  but  yet  I  might 
just  observe  how  strikingly  what  we  know  from 
other  quarters  confirms  the  accuracy  of  this  account, 
which  lays  the  invention  of  this  name  to  the  credit 
of  the  Antiochenes.  Antioch,  with  its  idle  and  wit- 
ty inhabitants,  was  famous  in  all  antiquity  for  the 


BRITAIN,    ANGLIA.  115 

invention  of  nicknames.  It  was  a  manufacture  in 
which  they  particularly  excelled :  and  thus  it  was 
exactly  the  place,  where  beforehand  we  might  have 
expected  that  such  a  name,  being  a  nickname  or 
little  better  in  the  mouths  of  those  that  devised  it, 
should  have  sprung  up. 

Our  other  example  shall  be  "  Anglia,"  or  "  Eng- 
land." When  and  under  what  circumstances  did 
this  island  exchange  for  this  its  earlier  name  of 
Britain,  which  it  had  borne  for  more  than  a  thou- 
sand years  ?  There  seems  no  sufficient  reason  for 
calling  in  question,  though  some  have  so  done,  the 
statement  of  the  old  chronicler  that  it  received  this 
new  name  of  Anglia  from  Egbert,  king  of  Wessex, 
who  with  the  sanction  of  his  parliament  or  witanege- 
mot,  holden  A.  D.  800  in  this  very  city  of  Winches- 
ter, determined  that  the  name  "  Britain"  should  give 
place  to  "England."  It  maybe  that  the  change 
was  not  eifected  by  any  such  formal  act  as  this,  yet 
the  accuracy  of  the  old  historian,  so  far  at  least  as 
his  date  is  concerned,  receives  strong  confirmation 
from  the  circumstance  that  "  Anglia,"  which  is  no- 
where to  be  traced  in  any  documents  anterior  to  this 
period,  does  immediately  after  begin  to  appear. 

What  lessons  for  the_student  of  English  history  are 
here,  in  the  knowledge  of  this  one  fact,  if  he  will  but 
seek  to  look  at  it  all  round,  and  consider  it  in  a 
thoughtful  spirit.  I  have  said  that  the  rise  of  a  new 
name  marks  often  a  new  epoch  in  history  ;  certainly 


116  THE   RISE   OF  NEW    WORDS. 

it  was  so  in  the  instance  before  us.  In  tlie  first 
place,  as  it  is  the  just  law  of  names,  that  a  people 
should  give  a  name  to  the  land  which  they  possess, 
not  receive  one  from  it,  as  the  Franks  make  Gaul  to 
be  France,  do  not  suffer  themselves  to  become  Gauls, 
so,  as  regards  our  own  land,  it  is  plain  from  the 
coming  up  of  this  name  that  there  must  have  been 
now  a  sense  in  men's  minds  that  its  transformation 
from  a  land  of  Britons  to  a  land  of  Angles  was  at 
length  completely  accomplished,  and  might  there- 
fore justly  claim  to  find  its  recognition  in  a  word. 
That  the  Normans  never  made  a  "  Gorman-land" 
out  of  England,  as  they  had  out  of  l^eustria,  and  as 
the  Angles  had  made  an  "  Angle-land"  out  of  Brit- 
ain—  that  they  never  so  supplanted  the  population 
or  dissolved  the  social  framework  of  the  Angles,  as 
these  had  done  of  the  Britons  —  is  evident  from  the 
fact  that  there  went  along  with  their  conquest  of  the 
land  no  such  substitution  of  a  new  name  for  the  old, 
no  such  obliteration  of  the  old  by  the  new,  as  on  that 
prior  occupation  of  the  soil  had  found  place.  —  And 
then,  further,  how  significant  a  fact,  that  the  inva- 
ding German  tribes,  which  had  hitherto  been  con- 
tent to  call  themselves  according  to  the  different 
provinces  or  districts  which  they  occupied,  should 
have  now  felt  that  they  needed,  and  out  of  that  need 
should  have  given  birth  to  a  name  common  to  and 
including  the  whole  land.  Was  there  not  here  a 
sign  that  the  sense  of  unity,  of  all  making  up  one 


HOW   NEW    WORDS   ARISE.  117 

corporate  body,  one  nation,  was  emerging  out  of  the 
confusion  of  the  preceding  period  of  the  heptarchy  ? 
We  know  from  other  sources  that  Egbert  was  the 
first  who  united  the  different  kingdoms  of  the  hep- 
tarchy under  his  single  sceptre ;  the  first  in  whom 
the  nation  was  knit  together  into  one.  How  instruct- 
ive to  find  a  name  which  should  be  the  symbol  of 
unity,  coming  to  the  birth  at  this  very  moment.  In 
respect,  too,  of  the  relations  between  themselves  of 
the  two  most  important  tribes  which  had  settled  in 
this  island,  the  Angles  and  the  Saxons  (the  Jutes 
were  too  few  to  contend  for  the  honor),  it  is  assured- 
ly a  weighty  fact  that  it  was  the  Angles  alone,  from 
whom,  though  numerically  inferior,  the  new  appel- 
lation was  derived.  Doubtless,  a  moral  or  political 
predominance  of  this  tribe,  probably  a  political 
founded  on  a  moral  asserted  itself  in  this  fact.  We 
are  the  less  inclined  to  attribute  it  to  accident  from 
the  circumstance  that  in  the  phrase  "  Anglo-Saxons" 
(Angli-Saxones),  a  term  which  is  no  modern  inven- 
tion of  convenience  as  is  sometimes  erroneously  as- 
serted, but  is  of  earlier  use  even  than  Anglia,  the 
Angles  have  again  the  precedence,  and  the  Saxons 
only  follow. 

It  will  be  seen,  I  think,  by  these  two  examples 
that  new  words  will  repay  any  attention  which  we 
may  bestow  upon  them,  and  upon  the  conditions  un- 
der which  they  emerge.  Let  us  proceed  to  consider 
the  causes  which  give  them  birth,  the  periods  when 


THE   BISE   OF   NEW   WORDS. 

a  language  is  most  fruitful  in  them,  the  regions  of 
society  from  which  they  usually  proceed,  with  some 
other  interesting  phenomena  about  them. 

The  cause  then  which  more  than  any  other  creates 
the  necessity  for  these  additions  to  the  vocabulary 
of  a  language,  and  calls  forth  the  words  which  shall 
supply  this  necessity,  when  it  is  felt,  is  beyond  a 
question  this — 'namely,  that  in  the  appointments  of 
highest  Wisdom  there  are  certain  cardinal  epochs 
in  the  world's  history,  in  which,  far  more  than  at 
other  times,  new  moral  and  spiritual  forces  begin  to 
work,  and  to  stir  society  to  its  central  depths.  When 
it  is  thus  with  a  people,  they  make  claims  upon  their 
language,  which  were  never  made  upon  it  hitherto. 
It  is  required  to  utter  truths,  to  express  ideas,  which 
were  strange  to  it  in  the  time  of  its  first  moulding 
and  shaping,  and  for  which  therefore  the  terms  suf- 
ficient will  naturally  not  be  found  in  it  at  once  — 
these  new  thoughts  and  feelings  being  larger  and 
deeper  than  any  with  which  hitherto  the  speakers 
of  that  tongue  had  been  familiar.  But  when  the 
bed  of  a  river  is  suddenly  -required  to  deliver  a  far 
greater  volume  of  waters  than  till  now  has  been  its 
wont,  it  is  nothing  strange  if  it  should  surmount  its 
banks,  break  forth  on  the  right  hand  and  on  the  left, 
or  even  force  new  channels  with  something  of  vio- 
lence for  itself.  The  most  illustrious  example  of  this 
whereof  I  have  been  speaking,  would  be,  of  course, 
the  coming  in  of  Christianity,  or,  to  include  the  an- 


LANGUAGES   EXPAND.  119 

terior  dispensation,  we  may  say,  of  revealed  religion 
into  the  ancient  heathen  world,'  with  the  consequent 
necessity  under  which  the  great  novel  truths  which 
were  then  proclaimed  to  mankind  lay,  of  clothing 
themselves  in  the  language  of  men,  in  the  languages 
of  Greece  and  Rome  —  languages  which  in  their 
previous  form  might  have  sufficed,  and  did  suffice, 
for  heathenism,  sensuous  and  finite  as  it  was,  but 
not  for  the  spiritual  and  infinite  of  the  new  dispen- 
sation. How  often  had  the  new  thoughts  to  weave 
a  new  garment  for  themselves,  inasmuch  as  that 
which  ,.they  found  ready  made  was  too  narrow  to 
wrap  themselves  withal ;  the  new  wine  to  find  new 
vessels  for  itself,  that  both  might  be  preserved,  the 
old  vessels  being  neither  sufficiently  strong  nor  ex- 
pansive to  hold  it. 

Thus,  not  to  speak  of  mere  technical  matters  which 
would  claim  their  utterance,  how  could  the  Greek 
language  have  had  a  word  for  u  idolatry,"  so  long  as 
the  sense  of  the  awful  contrast  between  the  worship 
of  the  living  God  and  of  dead  things  had  not  risen 
up  in  their  minds  that  spoke  it  ?  But  when  those 
began  to  use  Greek,  and  that  as  the  sole  utterance  of 
what  was  in  them,  men  to  whom  this  distinction  and 
contrast  was  the  most  earnest  and  the  deepest  con- 
viction of  their  lives,  the  words  "  idolatry,"  "  idola- 
ter," of  necessity  appeared.  The  heathen  claimed 
not  for  their  deities  to  be  "  searchers  of  hearts,"  dis- 
claimed not  for  them  the  being  "  accepters  of  per- 


120  THE   KISE   OF   NEW    WOKDS. 

sons ;"  such  attributes  of  power  and  righteousness 
entered  not  into  their  minds  as  pertaining  to  the  ob- 
jects of  their  worship.  The  Greek  language,  there- 
fore, so  long  as  they  only  employed  it,  had  not  the 
words  corresponding.  It  indeed  could  not  have,  as 
the  Jewish  Hellenistic  Greek  could  not  be  without 
them. 

As  these  difficulties  would  be  felt  the  most  strong- 
ly when  the  thought  and  feeling  which  had  been  at 
home  in  the  Hebrew,  the  original  language  of  inspi- 
ration, were  to  be  translated  into  Greek,  the  same 
also  would  reappear,  though  naturally  not  to  the 
same  extent,  when  that  which  had  gradually  woven 
for  itself  in  the  Greek  an  adequate  attire,  again  de- 
manded to  find  garments  in  the  Latin  wherein  it 
might  be  suitably  arrayed.  A  single  example  will 
illustrate  this  better  than  long  disquisitions.  There 
was  in  the  Greek  a  word  for  "  savior,"  which,  al- 
though it  had  often  been  degraded  to  unworthy  uses, 
having  been  applied  not  merely  to  heathen  deities, 
but  bestowed  as  a  title  of  honor  on  men,  and  these 
such  as  sometimes  were  rather  "  destroyers"  than 
"  saviors"  of  their  fellows,  was  yet  in  itself  sufficient 
to  set  forth  that  central  office  and  dignity  of  Christ 
—  the  word  being  like  some  profaned  temple,  which 
did  not  need  to  be  rebuilt,  but  only  to  be  consecrated 
anew.  With  the  Latin  it  was  otherwise  ;  the  lan- 
guage seemed  to  be  without  a  word  of  such  frequent 
recurrence,  and  essential  use  to  Christianity :  indeed 


SAVIOR,    SALVATOR.  121 

Cicero,  than  whom  none  could  know  better  the  capa- 
bilities of  his  own  tongue,  distinctly  declared  that  it 
possessed  no  single  word  corresponding  to  the  Greek 
"  savior."  *  "  Salvator"  would  have  been  the  natu- 
ral word ;  but  the  classical  Latin,  though  it  had 
"  salus"  and  "  salvus,"  had  neither  this,  nor  the  verb 
"  salvare ;"  I  say  the  classical,  for  some  believe  that 
"  salvare"  had  always  existed  in  the  common  speech. 
"  Servator"  was  instinctively  felt  to  be  insufficient, 
even  as  in  English  "  preserver"  would  fall  very  short 
of  uttering  all  for  us  which  "  savior"  does  now ;  the 
seeking  of  the  strayed,  the  recovering  of  the  lost,  the 
healing  of  the  sick,  all  this  would  be  very  feebly  and 
faintly, insinuated  in  "preserver."  God  " preserveth 
man  and  beast,"  but  he  is  the  "  Savior"  of  his  own, 
in  a  far  more  inward  and  far  tenderer  sense. '  For 
some  time  the  Latin  Christian  writers  were  in  con- 
siderable perplexity  how  they  should  render  the 
Greek  word,  employing  "  salutare,"  "  sospitator," 
and  other  terms  more  unsatisfactory  still.  The 
strong  good  sense  of  Augustine,  however,  finally 
disposed  of  the  difficulty.  He  made  no  scruple 
about  employing  "salvator;"  observing  well,  and 
with  a  true  insight  into  the  law  of  the  growth  of 
words,  that  it  was  not  good  Latin  before  the  Savior 
came ;  but  when  he  came,  he  made  it  to  be  such ; 

*  Hoc  [o-cjrfy]  quantum  est?  ita  -magnum  ut  Latin  e  uno  verbo 
axprimi  non  possit. 


122  THE   EI8E   OF   NEW   WOKDS. 

for  as  shadows  follow  substances,  so  words  result 
from  things.* 

These  are,  as  I  said,  the  most  illustrious  examples 
of  the  coming  in  of  a  new  world  of  thoughts  and 
feelings  into  the  bosom  of  humanity,  whereby  has 
been  necessitated  a  corresponding  creation  in  the 
world  of  words,  their  outward  representatives.  And 
the  same  has  repeated  itself  continually  since  ;  each 
new  reception  of  the  "Word  of  life  by  another  people 
must  needs  bring  over  again  the  same  effects  with 
more  or  less  striking  features.  It  is  true  we  are  not 
so  favorably  placed  for  tracing  these  eifects  as  in 
the  cases  of  the  two  classical  languages  of  antiquity : 
yet  our  missionaries,  to  whom  the  study  of  language 
is  in  many  respects  so  greatly  indebted,  have  inci- 
dentally told  us  much  on  this  subject,  and,  were 
their  attention  particularly  directed  to  it,  might 
doubtless  tell  us  much  more. 

But  it  is  not  only  when  new  truth  directly  from 
God  has  thus  to  fit  itself  to  the  lips  of  men,  that  such 
enlargements  of  speech  follow,  but  in  each  further 
unfolding  of  those  seminal  truths  implanted  in  man's 
heart  at  the  first,  in  each  new  enlargement  of  his 

*  Serm.  299,  6  :  "  Christus  Jesus,  id  est  Christus  Salyator :  hoc  est 
enim  Latine  Jesus.  Nee  quserant  grammatici  quam  sit  Latinum,  seel 
Christiani,  quam  verum.  Salus  enim  Latinum  nomen  est:  salvare 
et  salvator  non  fuerunt  hsec  Latina,  antequam  veniret  Salyator: 
quando  ad.  Latinos  venit,  et  hsec  Latina  fecit.  Cf.  De  Trin.  xiii.  10: 
Quod  verbum  [salvator]  Latina  lingua  antea  non  habebat,  sed  habe- 
re  poterat ;  siout  potuit  quando  voluit." 


NEW   WOKDS   INDISPENSABLE.  123 

sphere  of  knowledge,  outward  or  inward,  lie  the 
same  necessities  involved.  -  The  beginnings  and 
progressive  advances  of  moral  philosophy  in  Greece, 
the  transplanting  of  the  same  to  Rome,  the  rise  of 
the  scholastic,  and  then  of  the  mystic  theology  in 
the  middle  ages,  the  discoveries  of  modem  science 
and  natural  philosophy,  all  these  have  been  accom- 
panied with  corresponding  extensions  in  the  limits 
of  language.  Of  the  words  to  which  each  of  these 
has  in  turn  given  birth,  many,  it  is  true,  have  never 
passed  beyond  their  own  peculiar  sphere,  having  re- 
mained technical,  scientific,  or  purely  theological  to 
the  last ;  but  many  also  have  passed  over  from  the 
laboratory,  the  school,  and  the  pulpit,  into  daily  life, 
and  have,  with  the  ideas  which  they  incorporate,  be- 
come the  common  heritage  of  all.  For,  however 
hard  and  repulsive  a  front  any  study  or  science  may 
seem  to  present  to  the  great  body  of  those  who  are 
as  laymen  to  it,  there  is  yet  inevitably  such  a  detri- 
tion as  this  going  forward  in  the  case  of  each,  and  it 
would  not  be  a  little  interesting  for  one  who  was 
furnished  with  the  knowledge  sufficient,  to  trace  it 
in  all. 

"Where  the  movement  is  a  great  popular  one,  stir- 
ring the  heart  and  mind  of  a  people  to  its  very 
depths,  such  as  the  first  reception  of  the  Christian 
faith,  there  these  new  words  will  be  for  the  most  part 
born  out  of  their  bosoms,  a  free  spontaneous  birth, 
seldom  or  never  capable  of  being  referred  to  one  man 


124  THE   KISE   OF   NEW   WORDS. 

more  than  another,  because  they  belong  to  all.  "Where 
on  the  contrary,  the  movement  is  "not  so,  is  more 
strictly  theological,  or  finds  place  in  those  regions  of 
science  and  philosophy,  where  as  first  pioneers  and 
discoverers  only  a  few  can  bear  their  parts,  there  the 
additions  and  extensions  will  lack  something  of  the 
freedom,  the  nnconscions  boldness,  which  marked  the 
others.  Their  character  will  be  more  artificial,  less 
spontaneous,  although  here  also  the  creative  genius 
of  the  single  man,  as  there  of  the  nation,  will  often- 
times set  its  mark ;  and  many  a  single  word  will 
come  forth,  which  shall  be  the  result  of  profound 
meditation,  or  of  intuitive  genius,  or  of  both  in  hap- 
piest combination — many  a  word,  which  shall  as  a 
torch  illuminate  vast  regions  comparatively  obscure 
before,  and,  it  may  be,  cast  its  rays  far  into  the  dark- 
ness beyond  ;  or  which,  summing  up  into  itself  all 
the  acquisitions  in  a  particular  direction,  of  the  past, 
shall  be  as  a  mighty  vantage  ground  from  which  to 
advance  to  new  conquests  in  the  realms  of  mind,  or 
of  nature,  as  yet  unsubdued  to  the  intellect  of  man. 
As  occupying  something  of  a  middle  place  between 
Jiose  more  deliberate  word-makers,  and  the  people 
whose  words  rather  grow  than  are  made,  we  must 
not  omit  him  who  is  a  maker  by  the  very  right  of 
his  name — I  mean,  the  poet.  That  creative  energy 
with  which  he  is  endowed  will  in  all  probability  man- 
ifest itself  in  this  region  as  in  others.  Extending  the 
domain  of  thought  and  feeling,  he  will  scarcely  fail  to 


WORDS   DELIBERATELY   COINED.  125 

extend  that  also  of  language,  which  does  not  willingly 
lao-  behind.  And  the  loftier  his  moods,  the  more  of 

O  ' 

this  maker  he  will  be.  The  passion  of  such  times, 
the  all-fusing  imagination,  will  at  once  suggest  and 
justify  audacities  in  speech,  upon  which  in  calmer 
moods  he  would  not  venture,  or,  if  he  ventured,  would 
fail  to  carry  others  with  him :  for  only  the  fluent 
metal  runs  easily  into  novel  shapes  and  moulds.  It 
is  not  merely  that  the  old  and  the  familiar  will  often 
become  new  in  his  hands  ;  that  will  give  the  stamp 
of  allowance,  as  to  him  it  will  be  free  to  do,  to  words, 
should  he  count  them  worthy,  which  hitherto  have 
lived  only  on  the  lips  of  the  multitude,  or  been  con- 
fined to  some  single  dialect  and  province ;  but  he  will 
enrich  his  native  tongue  with  words  unknown  and 
non-existent  before  —  non-existent,  that  is,  save  in 
their  elements ;  for  in  the  historic  period  of  a  lan- 
guage it  is  not  permitted  to  any  man  to  bring  new 
roots  into  it,  but  only  to  work  on  already  given  ma- 
terials ;  to  evolve  what  is  latent  therein,  to  combine 
what  is  apart,  to  recall  what  has  fallen  out  of  sight. 

But  to  return  to  the  more  deliberate  coining  of 
words.  This  will  often  find  place  for  the  supplying 
of  discovered  deficiencies  in  a  language.  The  man- 
ner in  which  men  most  often  become  aware  of  such 
deficiencies,  is  through  the  comparison  of  their  own 
language  with  another  and  a  richer,  a  comparison 
which  is  forced  upon  them,  so  that  they  can  not  put 
it  by,  when  it  becomes  necessary  for  them  to  express 


126  THE   EISE   OF   NEW   WORDS. 

in  their  own  tongue  that  which  has  already  found  ut- 
terance in  another,  and  so  has,  at  any  rate,  shown 
that  it  is  utterable  in  human  speech.  Without  such 
a  comparison,  the  existence  of  the  want  would  prob- 
ably have  seldom  dawned  even  on  the  most  thought- 
ful. For  language  is  to  so  great  an  extent  the  con- 
dition and  limit  of  thought,  men  are  so  little  accus- 
tomed, indeed  so  little  able,  to  meditate  on  things, 
except  through  the  intervention  and  by  the  machinery 
of  words,  that  nothing  short  of  this  would  bring  them 
to  a  sense  of  the  actual  existence  of  any  such  wants. 
And  it  is,  I  may  observe,  one  of  the  advantages  of 
acquaintance  with  another  language  besides  our  own, 
and  of  the  institution  which  will  follow,  if  we  have 
learned  that  other  to  any  purpose,  of  these  compari- 
sons, that  we  thus  come  to  be  aware  that  names  are 
not,  and  least  of  all  the  names  which  any  single  lan- 
guage possesses,  co-extensive  with  things  (and  by 
"  things"  I  mean  subjects  as  well  as  objects  of  thought 
whatever  one  can  think  about),  that  a  multitude  of 
things  exist  which,  though  capable  of  being  resumed 
in  a  word,  are  yet  without  one,  unnamed  and  unre- 
gistered ;  so  that,  vast  as  is  the  world  of  names,  the 
world  of  realities  is  even  vaster  still.  Such  discov- 
eries the  Romans  made,  when  they  attempted  to 
transplant  the  moral  philosophy  of  Greece  to  an  Italian 
soil ;  they  found  that  many  of  its  words  had  no  equiv- 
alents in  their  own  tongue,  which  equivalents  there- 
fore they  proceeded  with  more  or  less  success  to  de- 


WORDS    INVENTED   BY   CICEKO.  127 

vise  for  themselves,  appealing,  with  this  view,  to  the 
latent  capacities  of  their  own  to'ngue.  For  example, 
the  Greek  schools  had  a  word,  and  one  playing  no 
unimportant  part  in  some  of  their  systems,  to  express 
the  absence  of  all  passion  and  pain.  As  it  was  ab- 
solutely ne££ssary  to  possess  a  corresponding  word, 
Cicero  invented  "  idolentia,"  as  the  "  if  I  may  so 
speak"  with  which  he  paves  the  way  to  his  first  in- 
troduction of  it,  manifestly  declares.* 

Sometimes,  indeed,  such  a  skilful  mintmaster  of 
words,  such  a  subtle  watcher  and  weigher  of  their 
forces  f  as  he  was,  will  note,  even  without  this  com- 
parison with  other  languages,  an  omission  in  his  own, 
which  thereupon  he  will  endeavor  to  supply.  Thus 
was  it  with  him  in  regard  of  "  invidentia."  While 
there  existed  in  the  Latin  two  adjectives  which, 
though  sometimes  confusedly  used,  had  yet  each  its 
peculiar  meaning,  "invidus,"  one  who  is  envious, 
"  invidiosus,"  one  who  excites  envy  in  others,  there 
was  only  one  substantive,  "  invidia,"  correlative  to 
them  both ;  with  the  disadvantage  therefore  of  being 
employed  now  in  an  active,  now  in  a  passive  sense, 
now  for  the  envy  which  men  feel,  and  now  for  that 
which  they  excite.  The  word  he  saw  was  made  to 
do  double  duty,  and  that  under  a  seeming  unity  there 
lurked  a  real  dualism,  from  which  manifold  confu- 

*  Fiu.  2,  4. 

f  Ille  verborum  vigilantissimus  appensor  ac  mensor,  as  Augustine 
happily  terms  him. 


128  THE   KISE   OF   NEW   WORDS. 

sions  might  follow.  He  therefore  devised  "  inviden- 
tia,"  to  express  the  active  envy,  or  the  envying,  no 
doubt  desiring  that  "  invidia"  should  be  restrained 
to  the  passive,  the  being  envied.  To  all  appearance 
the  word  came  to  supply  a  real  want,  yet  he  did  not 
succeed  in  giving  it  currency — indeed  does  not  seem 
himself  to  have  much  cared  to  employ  it  again.* 

"We  see  by  this  example  that  it  is  not  every  word 
which  even  a  great  master  of  language  proposes,  that 
finds  acceptance.f  He  must  be  contented,  if  some 
live,  that  others  should  fall  to  the  ground.  Nor  is 
this  the  only  one  which  Cicero  unsuccessfully  pro- 
posed. His  "  indolentia,"  which  I  mentioned  just 
now,  hardly  passed  beyond  himself:  his  "  vitiosi- 
tas";j:  not  at  all.  "  Beatitas,"  too,  and  "  beatitudo,"§ 
both  of  his  coining,  but  which  he  owns  to  have  some- 
thing strange  and  uncouth  about  them,  can  hardly 
be  said  to  have  found  more  than  the  faintest  echo  in 
the  classical  literature  of  Rome :  "  beatitudo,"  in- 
deed, obtained  a  home,  as  it  deserved  to  do,  in  the 
Christian  church,  but  the  other  made  no  way  what- 
soever. I  do  not  suppose  that  Coleridge's  "  esemplas- 
tic"  will  find  any  considerable  favor ;  while  the  words 
of  Jeremy  Taylor,  of  such  Latinists  as  Sir  Thomas 

*  Tasc.  3,  9 ;  4,  8.     C£  Doderlein's  Synon.  v.  3,  p.  68. 

f  Quintilian's  advice  to  those  who  come  after  is  excellent  here  (1, 
6,  42  :  "  Etiamsi  potest  nihil  peccare,  qui  utitur  iis  verbis  quse  sum- 
mi  auctores  tradiderunt,  multum  tamen  refert  non  solum  quid  dix«- 
rint,  sed  etiam  quid  persuascrint." 

\  Tusc.  4.  15.  §  Nat.  Deor.  1.  34. 


NOT   ALL   WOEDS   SUCCEED.  129 

Browne,  and  of  others,  that  were  born  only  to  die, 
are  multitudinous  as  the  leayes  of  autumn.  Still 
even  the  word  which  fails  is  often,  though  not  al- 
ways, an  honorable  testimony  to  the  scholarship,  the 
range  of  thought,  the  imagination  of  its  proposer ; 
and  Ben  Jonson  is  overhard  on  "  neologists,"  if  I 
may  bring  this  term  back  to  its  earlier  meaning, 
when  he  says :  "  A  man  coins  not  a  new  word  with- 
out some  peril,  and  less  fruit ;  for  if  it  happen  to  be 
received,  the  praise  is  but  moderate ;  if  refused,  the 
scorn  is  assured." 

But  I  alluded  just  now  to  comprehensive  words, 
which  should  singly  be  effectual  to  say  that  which 
hitherto  it  had  taken  many  words  to  say,  in  which 
a  higher  term  has  been  reached  than  before  had 
been  found.  It  is  difficult  to  estimate  too  highly  the 
value  of  such  words  for  the  facilitating  of  mental 
processes,  and  indeed  for  the  making  practicable  of 
many,  which  would  have  been  nearly  or  quite-  im- 
practicable without  them ;  and  those  who  have  in- 
vented, or  who  have  succeeded  in  putting  into  cir- 
culation such,  may  be  esteemed  as  benefactors  of  a 
high  order  to  knowledge.  In  the  ordinary  traffic  of 
life,  unless  our  dealings  were  on  the  smallest  scale, 
we  should  willingly  have  about  us  our  money  in  the 
shape  rather  of  silver  than  of  copper;  and  if  our 
transactions  were  at  all  extensive,  rather  in  gold 
than  in  silver ;  while  if  we  were  setting  forth  upon 
a  long  and  arduous  journey,  we  should  be  best 


130  THE   EISE   OF   NEW   WORDS. 

pleased  to  turn  even  our  gold  coin  itself  into  bills  of 
exchange  or  circular  notes ;  in  fact,  into  the  highest 
denomination  of  money  which  it  was  capable  of  as- 
suming. How  many  words  with  which  we  are  now 
perfectly  familiar  are  for  us  what  bills  of  exchange 
or  circular  notes  are  for  the  merchant  and  the  trav- 
eller. As  in  one  of  these  last,  innumerable  pence, 
a  multitude  of  shillings,  not  a  few  pounds,  are  gath- 
ered up  and  represented,  so  have  we  in  some  single 
words  the  quintessence  and  final  result  of  an  infinite 
number  of  anterior  mental  processes,  ascending  one 
above  the  other,  and  all  of  which  have  been  at 
length  summed  up  for  us  in  them.  "We  may  com- 
pare such  words  to  some  great  river,  which  does  not 
bring  its  flood  of  waters  to  the  sea,  till  many  rills 
have  been  swallowed  up  in  brooks,  and  brooks  in 
streams,  and  streams  in  tributary  rivers,  each  of 
these  having  lost  its  individual  being  in  that  which 
at  last  does  at  once  represent  and  is  continent  of 
them  all. 

Let  us  only  consider  all  which  must  have  gone  be- 
fore, ere  the  word  "  circle,"  with  its  corresponding 
idea,  could  have  come  into  existence ;  and  then  con- 
sider if,  each  time  that  in  some  long  and  difficult 
mathematical  problem  we  had  to  refer  to  the  figure 
BO  named,  we  were  obliged  to  introduce  the  entire 
definition  of  it,  because  no  single  word  stood  for  it 
—  and  not  this  only,  but  the  definition  of  each  term 
employed  in  the  definition — how  impossible  or 


QUINTESSENTIAL   WORDS. 

nearly  impossible  it  would  be  to  carry  the  whole 
process  in  the  mind,  or  to  take  oversight  of  its  steps. 
Imagine  a  few  more  words  struck  out  of  the  vocabu- 
lary of  the  mathematician,  and  if  all  mental  activity 
in  his  direction  was  not  quite  put  a  stop  to,  yet 
would  it  be  as  effectually  restricted  as  commerce 
and  exchange  would  be,  if  all  transactions  had  to  be 
carried  on  with  iron  or  copper  as  the  only  medium 
of  mercantile  intercourse. 

It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  words  of  such  pri- 
mary, almost  vital  necessity  for  the  science  whereto 
they  pertain  as  that  I  have  just  referred  to,  still  wait 
to  be  coined ;  but  yet,  wherever  knowledge  is  pro- 
gressive, words  are  keeping  pace  with  it,  which  with 
more  or  less  felicity  resume  in  themselves  very  much 
of  the  labors  of  the  past,  at  once  assist  and  abridge 
the  labors  of  the  future;  being  as  tools  which,  them- 
selves the  result  of  the  finest  mechanical  skill,  do  at 
the  same  time  render  other  and  further  triumphs  of 
art  possible,  which  would  have  been  quite  unattain- 
able without  them. 

But  it  is  not  merely  the  widening  of  men's  intel- 
lectual horizon,  which,  as  it  brings  new  thoughts 
within  the  range  of  their  vision,  constrains  the  origi- 
nation of  corresponding  words;  but  when  regions 
of  this  outward  world  hitherto  closed  are  laid  open 
to  them,  the  various  novel  objects  of  interest  which 
these  contain  will  demand  to  find  their  names,  and 
not  merely  to  be  catalogued  in  the  nomenclature  of 


32  THE   EISE   OF   NEW   WOKD3. 

science,  but  in  so  far  as  they  present  themselves  to 
the  popular  eye,  will  require  a  popular  name.  As 
however  nothing  ia  rarer  in  this  world  than  the  in- 
vention of  aught  which  is  entirely  new,  men  will 
most  often  content  themselves  with  applying  to  this 
new  a  name  drawn  from  that  old  wherewith  they 
are  already  familiar,  which  resembles  it  the  most. 
Yet  this  may  be  done  with  modifications  and  com- 
binations, which  shall  vindicate  for  it  an  original 
character.  Thus  when  the  Romans  became  ac- 
quainted with  the  stately  giraffe,  long  concealed 
from  them  in  the  inner  wilds  of  Africa,  and  we  learn 
from  Pliny  that  they  first  made  this  acquaintance  in 
the  shows  exhibited  by  Julius  Caesar,  it  was  happily 
imagined  to  designate  a  creature  combining,  though 
with  infinitely  more  grace,  yet  something  of  the 
height  and  even  the  proportions  of  the  camel  with 
the  spotted  skin  of  the  leopard,  by  a  name  which 
should  incorporate  both  these  its  most  prominent 
features,*  calling  it  the  "  camelopard  ;"  nor  can  we, 
I  think,  hesitate  to  accept  his  account  as  the  true 
one,  who  describes  the  word  as  no  artificial  creation 
of  the  scientific  naturalist,  but  as  bursting  extempore 
from  the  lips  of  the  populace  at  the  first  moment 
when  the  novel  creature  was  presented  to  their  gaze. 
"  Cerf-volant,"  a  name  which  the  French  so  happily 
gave  to  the  horned  scarabeus,  the  same  which  we 
somewhat  less  poetically  call  the  "  stagbeetle,"  is 

*  Vtirro :  "  Quod  erat  figura  ut  camelus,  maculis  ut  panthera." 


THE   WOKD   ALLIGATOR.  133 

another  example  of  what  may  be  effected  with  the 
old  materials,  by  merely  bringing  them  into  new 
combinations. 

Let  us  take  another  example,  and  one  which  will 
present  us  with  another  proof  of  that  which  we  have 
been  called  already  to  notice,  namely,  the  popular 
birth  of  a  multitude  of  words,  and  those  the  most 
genuine  which  rise  up  in  a  language ;  an  example 
also  of  the  manner  in  which  at  some  periods  of  its 
growth  everything  turns  to  good,  so  that  mistakes 
and  errors,  misshaping,  and  it  would  seem  marring 
a  word  at  its  formation,  yet  do  not  hinder  it  from 
forming  a  worthy  portion  of  the  after-tongue.  When 
the  alligator,  this  ugly  crocodile  of  the  new  world, 
was  first  seen  by  the  Spanish  discoverers,  they  called 
it,  with  a  true  insight  into  its  species,  "  el  lagarto," 
or  "  the  lizard,"  as  being  the  largest  of  that  species  to 
which  it  belonged.  In  Sir  "Walter  Raleigh's  Dis- 
covery of  Guiana,  the  word  still  retains  this  its 
Spanish  form.  Sailing  up  the  Orinoco,  "  We  saw 
in  it,"  he  says,  "  divers  sorts  of  strange  fishes  of  mar- 
vellous bigness,  but  for  lagartos  it  exceeded ;  for 
there  were  thousands  of  these  ugly  serpents,  and  the 
people  call  it,  for  the  abundance  of  them,  the  river 
of  lagartos,  in  their  [the  Spanish]  language."  We 
can  perfectly  explain  the  shape  which  afterward  the 
word  assumed,  by  supposing  that  English  sailors 
who  brought  home  the  word,  and  had  continually 
heard,  but  may  probably  have  never  seen  it  written, 


134  THE   EISE   OF  NEW   WORDS. 

blended,  as  lias  not  unfrequently  happened,  the  Span- 
ish article  "  el"  with  the  name,  and  thus  from  this 
absorption  of  the  article  it  acquired  the  shape  in 
which  we  possess  it  now.  In  Ben  Jonson,  who 
writes  "  aligarta,"  we  see  the  word  in  the  process  of 
its  transformation.* 

One  of  the  most  legitimate  methods  by  which  a 
language  may  increase  in  wealth,  especially  in  the 
times,  when  its  generative  energy  is  in  great  part 
spent,  as  after  a  certain  period  is  the  case  with  all, 
is  through  the  reviving  of  old  words,  not,  that  is, 
without  discrimination,  but  of  such  as  are  worthy  to 
be  revived ;  which  yet  through  carelessness,  or  ill- 
placed  fastidiousness,  or  a  growing  un acquaintance 
on  the  part  of  a  later  generation  with  the  elder  wor- 
thies of  the  language,  or  some  other  cause,  have  been 
suffered  to  drop.  These  words,  obsolete  or  obsoles- 
cent, it  will  sometimes  happen  that  some  writer  in- 
structed in  the  early  literature  of  his  native  language 
is  not  willing  to  let  die,  and  himself  using  or  sug- 
gesting to  the  use  of  others,  is  successful  in  again 

*  I  can  not  remember  any  other  examples  of  this  curious  absorp- 
tion of  the  article  in  English,  though  probably  there  are  such ;  but 
two  in  French  present  themselves  to  me.  "  Lierre,"  which  is  "  ivy," 
•was  written  in  early  French,  as  by  Ronsard,  "  1'hierre,"  which  is  no 
doubt  correct,  being  from  the  Latin  "hedcra;"  but  "loutre,"  the 
otter,  which  Ampere  supposes  ^o  have  been  originally  "  1'outre,"  is 
manifestly  the  Latin,  "  lutra."  "  La  Pouille,"  a  name  given  to  the 
southern  extremity  of  Italy,  and  in  which  we  recognise  "Apulia,"  is 
another  variety  of  error,  but  moving  in  the  same  sphere. 


REVIVAL   OF   OLD  WORDS.  135 

putting  into  circulation.*  And  to  the  poet  more 
than  any  other  it  will  be  thus  free  to  recall  and  re- 
cover the  forgotten  treasures  of  his  native  language. 
Yet  if  success  is  to  attend  his  attempt,  or  that  of  any- 
other,  the  words  to  which  it  is  thus  sought  to  impart 
a  second  life  must  scarcely  belong  to  the  hoar  anti- 
quities of  the  language,  with  the  dust  of  many  cen- 
turies upon  them,  being  not  merely  out  of  use,  but 
out  of  all  memory  as  well.  A  word  which  has 
not  been  employed  since  Chaucer  is  in  a  very  differ- 
ent position  from  one  that  has  only  dropped  out  of 
active  service  since  Spenser  or  Shakspere,  and  which, 
being  found  in  their  writings,  or  in  those  of  their 
great  compeers,  has  preserved  for  the  circle  of  edu- 
cated readers  a  certain  vitality.  Thus,  if  I  might 
dissent  from  a  great  living  master  of  English,  I 
should  doubt  the  employment  of  such  "  Chaucer- 
isms,"  to  use  Ben  Jonson's  phrase  on  this  very  sub- 
ject, as  "  to  burgeon,"  as  I  should  quite  despair  even 
of  his  effecting  that,  which  of  course  he  must  look 
forward  to  in  using  it,  namely,  the  giving  to  it  cur- 

*  A  modern  French  writer  of  some  eminence,  Charles  Nodier,  has 
composed  a  treatise  on  the  subject  of  "words  in  his  own  language 
which  have  become  obsolete,  and  ought  to  be  revived.  "We  have  a 
curious  proof  of  the  unobserved  manner  in  which  this  sometimes  is 
accomplished  in  the  fact  that  "  vaillant/'  which  certainly  now  is  not 
felt  to  have  anything  archaic  about  it,  was  seriously  found  fault  with, 
as  out  of  date,  when  employed  in  the  epitaph  of  Turenne.  Horace, 
too,  a  great  observer  of  the  fortunes  of  words,  who  has  said  more 
and  wiser  things  about  them  in  a  few  lines  of  his  De  Arte  Poeticd 
than  ever  have  been  said  elsewhere,  gives  this  as  his  conviction: 
"  Multa  renascentur,  quse  jam  cecidere." 


136  THE   KISE   OF  NEW   WORDS. 

rency  again.  But  the  case  is  altogether  different 
with  words  which  have  been  only  recently  lost,  or  in 
some  sense  not  lost  at  all — such  words,  for  example, 
as  "  leer,"  "  lese,"  "  debonair,"  "  deft,"  "  malapert," 
"  phantast,"  which  I  instance,  as  every  one  of  them 
to  my  mind  worthy  to  have  continued.  The  case  is 
different,  because  of  these  some  have  never  gone 
.out  of  use  among  our  humbler  classes,  so  often  the 
conservators  of  precious  words  and  genuine  idioms : 
thus  you  all  probably  know  very  well  that  "  leer"  is 
with  our  rustic  population  in  the  south  a  commoner 
word  than  "  empty  ;"  "  to  lese,"  very  much  more  in 
use  than  "  to  glean ;"  indeed  this  last  is  scarcely 
known.  Others  again,  as  "  deft,"  "  debonair,"  "  ma- 
lapert," reach  down,  at  least  in  literary  use,  to  the 
middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  with,  in  the  case 
of  the  last,  the  further  inconvenience  entailed  by  its 
loss,  that  we  have  been  obliged  to  make  "pert" 
which  remains  do  double  duty,  that  of  "  malapert" 
and  its  own.  For  as  some  word  is  plainly  wanting, 
not  so  strong  as  "  insolent,"  we  have  been  led  to 
employ  "  pert"  exclusively  in  an  unfavorable  sense, 
while  yet  it  was  free  of  old  to  use  it  also  in  a  good, 
even  as  among  our  southern  poor  it  still  retains  the 
meaning  of  "  sprightly"  or  "  lively ;"  a  child  recov- 
ering from  illness,  a  cagebird  after  moulting,  are  said 
to  look  quite  "pert"  again  —  an  employment  of  the 
word  justified  by  Shakspere's 

"  Awake  the  pert  and  nimble  spirit  of  youth." 


ORIGIN   OF   THE   WOED   EOUE.  137 

Other  and  less  honorable  causes  than  many  of 
those  which  I  have  sought  hitherto  to  trace,  give 
birth  to  new  words;  and  it  will  happen  that  the 
character  and  moral  condition  of  an  epoch  are  only 
too  plainly  revealed  by  the  new  words  which  have 
risen  up  in  that  period,  upon  which  sometimes  they 
reflect  back  a  very  fearful  light.  Thus  a  great  Latin 
historian  tells  us  of  the  Roman  emperor,  Tiberius, 
one  of  those  "  inventors  of  evil  things"  to  whom  St. 
Paul  alludes  (Rom.  i.  30),  that  he  caused  words  un- 
known before  to  emerge  in  the  Latin  tongue,  for  the 
setting  out  of  wickedness,  happily  also  previously 
unknown,  which  he  had  invented. 

The  atrocious  attempt  of  Louis  the  Fourteenth  to 
convert  to  Romanism  the  protestants  in  his  domin- 
ions by  quartering  dragoons  upon  them,  with  all  li- 
cense to  misuse  to  the  uttermost  those  who  would 
not  apostatize  from  their  faith,  this  "  booted  mission" 
(mission  bottee),  as  it  was  facetiously  called,  has  be- 
queathed "  dragonade"  to  the  French  language.  I 
believe  "  refugee"  had  about  the  same  time  its  rise, 
being  first  applied  to  those  who  escaped  the  tender 
mercies  of  these  missionaries. 

And  "  roue,"  a  word  to  a  considerable  extent  nat- 
uralized among  us,  throws  light  upon  a  curious 
though  a  shameful  page  of  history.  It  is  a  term  ap- 
plied, as  we  may  be  aware,  to  a  man  of  profligate 
character  and  conduct ;  but  properly  and  primarily 
means  one  "  wheeled,"  or  broken  on  the  wheel. 


138  THE   RISE   OP   NEW   WORDS. 

Now  the  first  person  who  gave  it  its  secondary 
meaning,  was  the  profligate  duke  of  Orleans,  re- 
gent of  France  in  the  interval  between  the  reigns 
of  Louis  the  Fourteentli  and  Fifteenth.  It  was  his 
miserable  pride  to  collect  around  him  companions  as 
worthless  and  wicked  as  himself,  and  he  called  them 
his  "  roues,"  inasmuch  as  there  was  not  one  of  them 
that  did  not  deserve,  as  he  was  wont  to  boast,  to  be 
broken  on  the  wheel,  that  being  then  in  France  the 
punishment  for  the  worst  malefactors.*  When  we 
have  learned  the  pedigree  of  the  word,  the  man  and 
the  age  which  gave  it  birth  rise  up  before  us,  glory- 
ing in  their  shame,  and  no  longer  caring  to  pav  even 
that  outward  hypocritical  homage,  which  vice  yields 
often  to  virtue. 

The  great  French  Kevolution  has  made  also  its 
contributions  to  the  French  language;  and  these 
contributions  characteristic  enough.  "We  know 
much  of  that  event,  when  we  know  that  among 
other  words  it  gave  birth  to  these,  "incivisme," 
"  sansculotte,"  "  noyade,"  "  guillotine."  And  still 
later,  the  French  conquests  in  North  Africa,  and  the 
pitiless  methods  by  which  every  attempt  at  resist- 
ance on  the  part  of  the  free  tribes  of  the  interior  has 
been  put  down  and  punished,  all  this  has  left  its 
mark  upon  the  language;  for  it  has  added  to  it  the 

*  The  "roues"  themselves  declared  that  the  word  expressed  rather 
their  readiness  to  give  any  proof  of  their  affection,  even  to  the  be- 
ing broke  upon  the  wheel,  to  their  protector  and  friend. 


WORDS   RECORDS  OF  SHAME.  13S 

word  "  razzia,"  to  express  the  sweeping  and  sudden 
destruction  of  a  tribe,  its  herds,  its  crops,  and  all 
that  belongs  to  it  —  a  word  bearing  on  its  front  that 
it  is  not  originally  of  French  formation,  having  rather 
an  Italian  physiognomy,  but  being,  I  believe,  the 
popular  corruption  of  an  Arabic  word  —  one  of 
which  the  language  therefore  may  be  as  little  proud, 
as  the  people  of  the  thing  which  is  indicated  by  it. 

But  it  would  ill  become  us  to  look  only  abroad  for 
examples  of  that  whereof  perhaps  at  least  an  equal 
abundance  may  be  found  much  nearer  home,  and  it 
must  at  once  be  acknowledged  that  there  are  words 
also  among  ourselves,  which  preserve  a  record  of 
passages  in  our  history  in  which  we  have  little  rea- 
son to  glory.  "  Plunder"  was  a  word  first  heard  of 
in  England  in  the  period  immediately  preceding  our 
civil  wars,  between  1630  and  1640.  Richardson, 
whose  Dictionary  has  in  most  cases  the  passage  in 
English  literature  which  best  serves  to  mark  the  ex- 
act epoch  of  a  word's  appearing,  as  well  as  the  cir- 
cumstances which  attended  its  rise,  has  passed  over 
two  instructive  passages  in  Fuller  in  regard  of  this. 
He  observes  with  truth  that  the  word  began  to  be  in 
common  use  at  the  commencement  of  the  Great  Re- 
bellion. The  word  is  German,  for  this  Fuller  means, 
when  he  calls  it  "  Dutch,"  and  he  ascribes  the  first 
bringing  of  it  in  to  the  soldiers  who  returned  from 
the  campaigns  of  Gustavus  Adolphus.  "  Sure  I  am," 
be  says,  "  we  first  heard  thereof  in  the  Swedish  ware ; 


I'M)  THE.  BISE   OF   NEW    WORDS. 

and  if  the  name  and  thing  be  sent  back  whence 
it  came,  few  English  eyes  would  weep  thereat."4* 
The  "  thing"  was  not  exactly  what  it  is  now ;  it  was 
not  the  spoiling  by  an  open  violence,  but  the  ran- 
sacking and  robbing  which  under  legal  pretence  as 
of  searching  for  papers  found  place,  of  the  eiFects 
of  the  so-called  "  malignants ;"  so  that  "  plunderings 
and  sequestrations"  are  named  continually  together. 
"  Delinquent"  belongs  to  the  same  epoch. 

"  Mob,"  too,  and  "  sham,"  had  their  birth  in  one 
of  the  most  shameful  periods  of  English  history,  that 
between  the  Restoration  and  Revolution.  The  first 
of  these  words  originated  in  a  certain  club  in  Lon- 
don in  the  latter  end  of.  the  reign  of  Charles  the 
Second.  "  I  may  note,"  says  a  writer  of  the  time, 
"  that  the  rabble  first  changed  their  title,  and  were 
called  the  l  mob'  in  the  assemblies  of  this  [the 
Green  Ribbon]  club.  It  was  their  beast  of  burden, 
and  called  first  '  mobile  vulgus,'  but  fell  naturally 
into  the  contraction  of  one  syllable,  and  ever  since 
is  become  proper  English."f  Tet  we  find  consid- 
erably later  a  writer  in  The  Spectator  speaking  of 
"  mob"  as  still  only  struggling  into  existence.  "  I 
dare  not  answer,"  he  says,  "  that  mob,  rap,  pos,  in- 
cog., and  the  like  will  not  in  time  be  looked  at  as 
part  of  our  tongue."  In  regard  of  "  mob,"  abbrevi- 

*  Church  History,  b.  11,  §  4,  33 ;  cf.  b.  9,  §  4,  quite  at  the  begin- 
ning. 

\  North's  Examen,  p.  574.  If  we  may  trust  the  origin  of  "  sham" 
which  he  gives,  p.  231,  it  is  not  less  disgraceful  than  the  word  itself 


SLANG   WOKDS    EECEIVED.  141 

ated  as  we  see  from  "  mobile,"  the  multitude  swayed 
hither  and  thither  by  each  gust  of  passion  or  caprice, 
this,  which  that  writer  plainly  hardly  expected, 
while  he  confessed  it  possible,  has  actually  taken 
place.  "  It  is  one  of  the  many  words  formerly  slang, 
which  are  now  used  by  our  best  writers,  and  re- 
ceived, like  pardoned  outlaws,  into  the  body  of  re- 
spectable citizens." 

And  though  the  murdering  of  poor  helpless  lodg 
ers,  afterward  to  sell  their  bodies  to  the  surgeons  for 
dissection,  can  not  be  regarded  as  a  crime  in  which 
the  nation  had  a  share,  or  anything  but  the  monstrous 
wickedness  of  one  or  two,  yet  the  word  "  to  burk," 
drawn  from  the  name  of  a  wretch  who  long  pursued 
this  hideous  traffic,  a  word  which  has  won  its  place 
in  the  language,  will  be  a  lasting  memorial  in  all 
after-times,  unless  indeed  its  origin  should  be  forgot- 
ten, to  how  strange  a  crime  this  age  of  a  boasted  civ- 
ilization could  give  birth. 

Such  are  some  of  the  sources  of  the  increase  in  the 
wealth  of  a  language,  or,  it  may  be,  in  that  which 
has  no  just  title  to  be  termed  by  this  name.  There 
have  been,  from  time  to  time,  those  who  have  so  little 
understood  what  a  language  and  the  laws  of  a  lan- 
guage are  —  that  it  has  a  life,  just  as  really  as  a  man 
or  as  a  tree — that,  as  a  man,  it  must  grow  to  its  full 
stature,  being  also  submitted  to  his  conditions  of  de- 
cay—  as  a  forest-tree,  will  defy  any  feeble  bands 
which  should  attempt  to  control  its  expansion,  so  long 


142  THE   BISE   OF   NEW   WOKDS. 

as  the  principle  of  growth  is  in  it — as  a  tree  too  will 
continually,  while  it  casts  off  some  leaves,  be  putting 
forth  others — that  they  have  sought  by  a  decree  of 
theirs  to  arrest  its  growth,  to  pronounce  it  to  have 
attained  to  the  limits  of  its  growth  and  development, 
so  that  no  one  should  henceforward  presume  to  make 
additions  to  it.  The  attempt  has  utterly  failed,  even 
when  made  under  the  most  favorable  conditions  for 
success.  For  instance,  the  French  academy,  con- 
taining the  great  body  of  the  distinguished  literary 
men  of  France,  once  sought  to  exercise  such  a  dom- 
ination over  their  own  language,  and,  if  any  could 
have  succeeded,  might  have  hoped  to  do  so.  But 
the  language  recked  of  their  decrees,  as  little  as  the 
advancing  ocean  did  of  those  of  Canute.  They  were 
obliged  to  give  way,  and  in  each  successive  edition 
of  their  dictionary  to  throw  open  its  doors  to  words 
which  had  established  themselves  in  the  language, 
and  would  hold  their  ground,  comparatively  indiffer- 
ent whether  they  received  their  seaF  of  allowance 
or  no. 

Certainly  those  who  make  attempts  of  this  kind 
strangely  forget  that  all  the  words  in  a  language, 
with  the  exception  of  its  primitive  roots,  were  at  one 
time  or  another  novelties.  We  have  so  taken  for 
granted  that  those  with  which  we  have  been  always 
familiar,  whose  right  to  form  a  part  of  it  no  one 
dreams  of  challenging  or  disputing,  being  perfectly 
naturalized  now,  have  always  formed  part,  of  it,  that 


OPPOSITION   TO   NEW   WORDS.  14:3 

we  should,  I  believe,  be  somewhat  startled  to  discov- 
er of  how  very  late  introduction  not  a  few  of  them 
actually  are,  what  an  amount  of  remonstrance,  and 
even  resistance,  some  of  them  encountered  at  the 
first.  To  take  two  or  three  Latin  examples.  Cicero, 
in  employing  "  favor,"  a  word  in  a  little  while  after 
used  by  everybody,  does  it  with  an  apology,  seems 
to  feel  that  he  is  introducing  a  questionable  novelty ; 
"  urbanus,"  too,  in  our  sense  of  "  urbane,"  had  only 
just  come  up ;  "obsequium"  he  believes  Terence  to 
have  been  the  first  to  employ.*  "  Soliloquium" 
seems  to  us  so  natural,  indeed  so  necessary,  a  word, 
this  "  soliloquy,"  or  talking  of  a  man  with  himself, 
something  which  would  so  inevitably  seek  out  its 
suitable  expression,  that  it  is  hard  to  persuade  oneself 
that  no  one  spoke  of  a  soliloquy  before  Augustine, 
that  the  word  should  have  been  invented,  as  he  dis- 
tinctly informs  us,  by  himself. f 

And  to  take  some  English  examples  :  Sir  Thomas 
Elyot  (1534)  speaks  of  the  now  familiar  words  "  fru- 
gality," "  temperance,"  "  sobriety,"  "  magnanimity," 
as  being  not  in  his  day  in  general  use ;  "  magnanim- 
ity," however,  is  in  Chaucer.  The  translators  of  the 
authorized  version  of  the  Bible,  in  a  preface  not  now 
often  reprinted,  but  prefixed  to  the  original  edition, 
find  fault,  and  others  had  done  the  same  before  them, 
with  the  Greek  and  Latin  words  —  "inkhorn  terms," 

*  On  the  new  words  in  classical  Latin  see  Quintilian  viii.,3,  30-37 
f  Solil.  2,  7. 


144:  THE    RISE   OF   NEW    WORDS. 

Fulke  calls  them — with  which  the  Rhemish  transla- 
tors so  plentifully  sprinkled  their  version ;  with  the 
intention,  as  these  last  affirmed,  of  preserving  for  it 
an  ecclesiastical  character;  but  as  others,  and  we 
can  scarcely  say  uncharitably,  charged  them,  that 
so,  if  they  must  give  the  Scriptures  in  the  vulgar 
tongue,  they  might  yet  keep  them,  as  far  as  might  be, 
"  dark  and  unprofitable  to  the  ignorant  readers."  In 
many  cases  the  accusation  was  quite  borne  out  by 
the  facts,  and  the  Greek  and  Latin  terms  they  em- 
ployed could  never  have  made  themselves  at  home 
in  English  ;  but  this  certainly  is  not  so  in  all.  Thus 
"rational,"  "tunic,"  "scandal,"  "neophyte,"  were 
severally  either  words  which  had  not  been  invented 
by  the  Rhemish  translators,  having  existed  long  be- 
fore ;  or  the  sequel  has  gone  far  to  justify  them  in 
what  they  did,  the  words  having  been  freely  absorbed 
into  the  language,  as  useful  additions  to  it.  "To 
evangelize"  was  another  word  which  they  were 
blamed  for  introducing.  It  was  quite  worthy  to  have 
been  introduced,  supposing  it  had  not  previously  been 
in  being ;  but  it  already  found  place  in  Wiclif's  ver- 
sion, as  at  Luke  i.  19,  xvi.  16,  which  the  Rhemish 
merely  follows,  so  that  Fulke  is  every  way  unjust  in 
urging  against  the  authors  of  this :  "  "When  you  say 
'  evangelized,"1  you  do  not  translate,  but  feign  a  new 
word,  which  is  not  understood  of  mere  English  ears." 
Considering  how  old  a  thing  is  selfishness  in  the 
world,  we  should  hardly  have  expected  to  find  "sel- 


PKETENSIOUS,    A   NEW   WOED.  145 

fish"  to  bo  a  "word  of  such  late  devising  as  it  proves. 
From  a  passage  in  Hacket's1  Life  of  Archbishop 
Williams,  we  certainly  conclude  that  it  had  only 
newly  conie  up  in  his  time,  and  been  freshly  issued 
from  the  puritan  mint.*  "  Mob"  is  of  still  later  date, 
belonging,  as  we  saw  just  now,  to  the  latter  half  of 
the  seventeenth  century.  "  Coffee"  and  "  tea"  were 
not  naturalized  words  in  Locke's  time,  at  least  not 
in  1684.  He  writes  "Coffe,"  "theV'f  "Tour"  is 
printed  "  tour"  so  late  as  1712.  "  Pretentious,"  the 
adjective  of  "  pretence,"  which  is  a  word  at  the  pres- 
ent moment  forcing  its  way  into  existence,  is  now 
displeasing  enough  to  delicate  ears,  yet  no  doubt  it 
will  keep  its  ground,  for  it  supplies  a  real  need,  and 
has  the  analogy  of  the  French  "  pretentieux"  to  help 
it ;  in  a  very  little  while  multitudes  will  use  it,  quite 
unconscious  that  it  is  not  older,  nor  perhaps  so  old 
as  they  are  themselves. 

When  a  word  has  proved  an  unquestionable  gain 
to  the  language,  it  is  very  interesting  to  preside,  so 
to  speak,  at  its  birth,  to  watch  it  as  it  first  comes 
forth,  timid,  and  it  may  be  as  yet  doubtful  of  the  re- 
ception it  will  meet  with ;  and  the  interest  is  very 
much  enhanced,  if  it  thus  come  forth  on  some  mem- 
orable occasion,  or  from  some  memorable  man.  Both 

*  Hacket's  Life  of  Archbishop  Williams,  part  2,  p.  144 :  "  When 
they  [the  presbyterians]  saw  that  he  was  not  selfish  (it  is  a  word  of 
their  own  new  mint),"  <fec. 

f  Ix>cke's  Diary,  in  his  Life  by  Lord  King,  p.  42. 

T 


146  THE   BISE   OF   NEW   WOEDS.  * 

these  interests  meet  in  the  word  "  essay."  If  any 
one  were  asked  what  is  the  most  remarkable  volume 
of  essays  which  the  world  has  seen,  few,  having  suf- 
ficient oversight  of  the  field  of  literature  to  be  capa- 
ble of  replying,  would  fail  to  answer,  Lord  Bacon's. 
But  they  were  also  the  first  which  bore  that  name ; 
for  we  certainly  gather  from  the  following  passage  in 
the  (intended)  dedication  of  the  volume  to  Prince 
Henry,  that  the  word  "  essay"  was  altogether  a  very 
recent  one  in  the  English  language,  and  in  the  use 
to  which  he  put  it,  perfectly  novel :  he  says  :  "  To 
write  just  treatises  requireth  leisure  in  the  writer,  and 
leisure  in  the  reader ;  .  .  .  which  is  the  cause  which 
hath  made  me  choose  to  write  certain  brief  notes  set 
down  rather  significantly  than  curiously,  which  I 
have  called  Essays.  The  word  is  late,  but  the  thing 
is  ancient."  From  these  words,  and  others  which  I 
have  omitted  in  the  quotation,  we  further  gather  tha> 
little  as  "  essays"  at  the  present  day  can  be  consid 
ered  a  word  of  modesty,  deprecating  too  large  expec- 
tations on  the  part  of  the  reader,  it  had,  as  "  sketches" 
perhaps  would  have  now,  such  an  ethical  significance 
in  this  its  earliest  use.  In  this  last  respect  it  resem- 
bled the  "  philosopher"  of  Pythagoras.  Before  his 
time  the  founders  of  systems  of  philosophy  had  styled 
themselves,  or  been  willing  to  be  styled  by  others, 
"  wise  men."  This  appellation,  "  lover  of  wisdom," 
so  modest  and  so  beautiful,  was  of  his  devising. 
Let  us  remark,  at  the  same  time,  that  while  thus 


RATIONALIST  —  CHEISTOLOGY. 

Borne  words  surprise  us  that  they  are  so  new,  others 
again  that  they  are  so  old.  Few,  I  should  imagine, 
are  aware  that  the  word  "  rationalist,"  and  this  in  a 
theological,  and  not  merely  a  philosophical  sense,  is 
of  such  early  date  as  it  is  ;  or  that  we  have  not  im- 
ported quite  in  these  later  times  both  the  name  and 
the  thing  from  Germany.  This,  however,  is  very 
far  from  being  in  either  respect  the  case.  There 
was  a  sect  of  "  rationalists"  in  the  time  of  the  Com- 
monwealth, who  called  themselves  such  exactly  on 
the  same  grounds  as  those  who  in  later  times  have 
challenged  the  name.  Thus,  one  writing  the  news 
from  London,*  among  other  things,  mentions  : — 

"  There  is  a  new  sect  sprung  up  among  them  [the 
presbyterians  and  independents],  and  these  are  the 
rationalists,  and  what  their  reason  dictates  them 
in  church  or  state  stands  for  good,  until  they  be  con- 
vinced with  better ;"  with  more  to  the  same  effect. 
The  word  "  Christology"  a  recent  reviewer  has  char- 
acterized as  a  monstrous  importation  from  Germany. 
I  should  be  quite  ready  to  agree  with  him  that  Eng- 
lish theology  does  not  need,  and  can  do  excellently 
well  without  it ;  yet  is  it  not  this  absolute  novelty : 
for  in  the  preface  to  the  works  of  that  great  divine* 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  Thomas  Jackson,  written 
by  a  friend  and  scholar,  the  following  passage  oc- 
curs :  "  The  reader  will  find  in  this  author  an  emi- 

*  "With  date,  Oct.  14,  1646 ;  in  The  Clarendon  State  Papers,  v.  2, 
p.  40,  of  the  Appendix. 


148  THE   EISE   OF   NEW   WORDS. 

nent  excellence  in  that  part  of  divinity  which  I  make 
bold  to  call  Christology,  in  displaying  the  great 
mystery  of  godliness,  God  the  Son  manifested  in  hu- 
man flesh."* 

In  their  power  of  taking  up  foreign  or  otherwise 
new  words  into  healthy  circulation  and  making  them 
truly  their  own,  languages  are  very  different  as  com- 
pared with  one  another,  and  the  same  language  is 
very  different  from  itself  at  different  periods  of  its 
life.  There  are  languages  of  which  the  appetite  and 
digestive  power,  the  assimilative  energy,  is  at  some 
periods  almost  unlimited.  Nothing  is  too  hard  for 
them ;  they  will  shape  and  mould  to  their  own  uses 
and  habits  almost  whatsoever  is  offered  to  them. 
This  is  in  the  youth  of  a  language ;  as  age  advances 
upon  it,  this  assimilative  power  diminishes.  Words 
are  still  adopted  ;  for  this  process  of  adoption  can 
never  cease,  but  a  chemical  amalgamation  of  the 
new  with  the  old  does  not  any  longer  find  place,  or 
only  in  some  instances,  and  partially  in  them.  They 
lie  often  on  the  surface  of  the  language  ;  their  sharp 
corners  are  not  worn  and  rounded  off;  they  remain 
foreign  still  in  their  aspect  and  outline,  and,  having 
missed  the  great  opportunity  of  becoming  otherwise, 
will  remain  so  to  the  end.  Those  who  adopt,  as  with 
an  inward  misgiving  about  their  own  gift  and  power 
of  stamping  them  afresh,  seem  to  make  a  conscience 
of  keeping  them  in  exactly  the  same  form  in  which 

*  Preface  to  Dr.  Jackson's  Works,  v.  1,  p.  xxvii 


BISHOP,   EPISCOPAL.  149 

the}7  have  received  them ;  instead  of  conforming 
them  to  the  laws  of  that  new  community  into  which 
they  now  have  been  received.  Nothing  will  illus- 
trate this  better,  or  indeed  so  well  as  a  comparison 
of  different  words  of  the  same  family,  which  have 
at  different  periods  been  introduced  into  our  lan- 
guage. We  shall  find  that  those  of  an  earlier  intro- 
duction have  become  English,  through  and  through, 
while  the  later  introduced  belonging  to  the  same 
group,  have  been  very  far  from  undergoing  the  same 
transforming  process.  Thus  "bishop,"  a  word  as 
old  as  the  introduction  of  Christianity  into  England, 
though  not  hiding  its  descent  from  "  episcopus,"  is 
thoroughly  English  ;  while  "  episcopal,"  which  has 
supplanted  "  bishoply,"  is  only  a  Latin  word  in  an 
English  dress.  "  Alms,"  too,  is  genuine  English, 
and  English  which  has  descended  to  us  from  far; 
the  very  shape  in  which  we  have  the  word,  one  syl- 
lable for  "  eleemosyna"  of  six,  sufficiently  testifying 
this ;  •'  letters,"  as  Home  Tooke  observes,  "  like  sol- 
diers, being  apt  to  desert  and  drop  off  in  a  long 
march."  I  need  not  say  that  the  long  and  awkward 
"  eleemosynary"  is  of  a  very  much  more  recent  date. 
Or  sometimes  this  comparison  is  still  more  striking, 
when  it  is  not  merely  words  of  the  same  family,  but 
the  very  same  word  which  has  been  twice  adopted, 
at  an  earlier  period  and  a  later — the  earlier  form 
will  be  truly  English,  as  "palsy;"  the  later  will 
be  only  a  Greek  or  Latin  word  spelt  with  English 


150  THE   EKE   OF   NEW   WORDS. 

letters,  as  "paralysis."  "Dropsy,"  "megrim," 
"tansy,"  and  many  more  words  that  one  might 
name,  have  nothing  of  strangers  or  foreigners  about 
them,  have  made  themselves  quite  at  home  in  Eng- 
lisli ;  so  entirely  is  their  physiognomy  native  that  it 
would  be  difficult  even  to  suspect  that  they  were  of 
Greek  descent  as  they  are.  Nor  has  "  kickshaws" 
anything  about  it  now  which  would  compel  us  at 
once  to  recognise  in  it  the  French  "  quelques  choses" 
" French  kickshose"  as  with  allusion  to  the  quarter 
from  which  it  came,  and  while  the  memory  of  that 
was  yet  fresh  in  men's  minds,  it  was  often  called  by 
our  early  writers. 

An  eminent  German  grammarian  has  called  at- 
tention to  a  very  curious  process  which  he  traces 
many  German  words  to  have  undergone  in  the  act 
of  their  adoption  from  foreign  tongues,  whereby  not 
only  their  outward  form  and  shape  are  fitted  and 
moulded  to  their  new  home,  but  a  new  soul,  a  new 
principle  of  life  put  within  them.  What  he  means 
will  best  be  understood  by  a  single  illustration.  The 
Germans,  knowing  nothing  of  carbuncles,  had  natu- 
rally no  word  of  their  own  for  them,  and  when  they 
first  became  acquainted  with  them,  as  naturally  bor- 
rowed the  Latin  term  "  carbunculus,"  which  origi- 
nally had  meant  "  a  little  live  coal,"  to  designate 
these  precious  stones  of  a  fiery  red.  JBut  "  carbun- 
culus," though  a  real  word,  full  of  poetry  and  life, 
for  a  Latin,  would  have  been  only  an  arbitrary  sign 


LTJSCINIA,    ROSSIGNOL.  151 

for  others,  ignorant  of  that  language.  What  then 
did  they  do  ?  or  what,  rather  did  the  working  genius 
of  the  language  do?  It  adopted,  but  in  adopting 
modified  slightly  the  word,  changing  it  into  "kar 
fnnkel,"  thus  retaining  the  outlines  of  the  original, 
yet  at  the  same  time,  inasmuch  as  "  funkeln"  signi- 
fies "to  sparkle,"  reproducing  now  in  an  entirely 
novel  manner  the  image  of  the  bright  sparkling  of 
the  stone,  for  every  knower  of  his  native  tongue. 

I  have  no  doubt  that  our  own  language  would 
supply  instances  of  a  like  kind,  though  I  have  not 
any  such  at  the  present  to  adduce  to  you ;  which 
not  having,  I  must  be  content  with  one  which  the 
French  seems  to  supply  me.  "  Rossignol,"  a  night- 
ingale, is  undoubtedly  derived  from  the  Latin  "  lus- 
ciniola,"  the  diminutive  of  "luscinia,"  with  the  al- 
teration which  so  frequently  finds  place  in  the 
romance  languages,  of  the.  commencing  I  into  r. 
"Whatever  may  be  the  etymology  of  "luscinia," 
whether  it  be  "  in  lueis  cano,"  the  singer  in  the 
groves,  or  "  lugens  cano,','  the  melancholy  singer,  or, 
as  is  most  probable,  "  Inscus  cano,"  the  singer  in  the 
twilight,  with  which  our  "nightingale"  would  most 
closely  correspond,  it  is  plain  that  for  Frenchmen 
the  word  would  no  longer  be  suggestive  of  any  of 
these  meanings,  hardly  even  for  French  scholars, 
after  the  serious  transformations  which  it  had  under- 
gone ;  while  yet,  at  the  same  time,  in  the  exquisite- 
ly musical  "  rossignol,"  and  still  more,  perhaps,  in 


152  THE   RISE   OF   NEW   WOKDS. 

the  Italian  "  nsignuolo,"  there  is  an  evident  inten- 
tion and  endeavor  to  express  something  of  the  music 
of  the  bird's  song  in  the  liquid  melody  of  the  imita- 
tive name  which  it  bears ;  and  thus  to  put  a  new 
soul  into  the  word,  in  lieu  of  that  one  which  it  has 
lost. 

One  of  the  most  striking  facts  about  new  words, 
and  a  very  signal  testimony  of  their  birth  from  the 
bosom  of  the  people,  that  is,  where  they  are  not 
plainly  from  the  schools,  is  the  difficulty  which  is  so 
often  found  in  tracing  their  derivation.  "When  the 
causoe  vocum  are  sought,  which  they  justly  are,  and 
out  of  much  more  than  mere  curiosity,  for  the  causes 
rerum  are  very  often  contained  in  them,  they  contin- 
ually elude  research ;  and  this,  not  merely  where 
attention  has  only  been  called  to  the  words,  and  in- 
terest about  their  etymology  excited,  long  after  they 
had  been  in  popular  use,  and  when  thus  they  had 
left  their  origin,  whatever  it  may  have  been,  very 
far  behind  them  —  for  that  the  words  of  a  remote  an- 
tiquity should  often  puzzle  and  perplex  us,  should 
give  scope  to  idle  guesses,  or  altogether  defy  con- 
jecture, this  is  nothing  strange — but  even  when  it 
has  been  sought  to  investigate  their  origin  almost  as 
soon  as  they  have  come  into  existence.  Their  rise  is 
mysterious ;  like  so  many  other  acts  of  becoming r,  it 
is  veiled  in  deepest  obscurity.  They  appear,  they 
are  in  everybody's  mouth ;  but  yet  when  it  is  in- 
quired whence  they  are,  nobody  can  tell.  They  are 


\VOBDS    FOEGET   THEIR   ORIGIN.  153 

but  of  yesterday,  and  yet  with  a  marvellous  rapidity 
have  forgotten  the  circumstances  of  their  origin. 
Thus  Baxter  tells  us  in  his  most  instructive  N'arrar 
tive  of  Ms  Life  and  Times,  that  there  already  ex- 
isted two  theories  about  the  term  "  roundheads,"*  a 
word  not  nearly  so  old  as  himself,  showing  how 
much  uncertainty  already  rested  upon  it.  "  Canni- 
bal," as  a  designation  of  man-eating  savages,  came 
first  into  use  with  the  great  discoveries  in  the  west- 
ern world  of  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries. 
I  know  not  whether  it  occurs  earlier  than  in  Hack- 
luyt's  Voyages.  All  attempts  to  explain  it  have 
been  fruitless.  So,  too,  the  origin  of  "  huguenots," 
as  applied  to  the  French  protestauts,  was  already  a 
matter  of  doubt  and  discussion  in  the  lifetime  of 
those  who  first  bore  it.f  One  might  suppose  that  a 
name  like  "  Canada,"  given,  and  within  fresh  his- 
toric times,  to  a  vast  territory,  would  be  accounted 
for,  but  it  is  not;  or  that  the  Anglo-Americans 
would  be  able  to  explain  how  they  got  their  word 
"  caucus,"  which  plays  go  prominent  a  part  in  their 
elections,  but  they  can  not. 

*  "The  original  of  which  name  is  not  certainly  known.  Some 
say  it  was  because  the  puritans  then  commonly  wore  short  hair,  and 
the  king's  party  long  hair ;  some  say,  it  was  because  the  queen,  at 
Strafford's  trial,  asked  who  that  roundheaded  man  was,  meaning  Mr. 
Pym,  because  he  spake  so  strongly." — P.  34. 

f  I  can  hardly  doubt  that  it  is  a  corruption  of  "  eidgnoten,"  low 
German  for  "  eidgenossen,"  confederates ;  but  this  was  not  the  ex- 
planation of  some  who  must  have  been  grown  men  at  the  time  of  ita 
first  emerging. 

7* 


154:  THE   EISE   OF   NEW   WOBDS. 

These  are  but  a  handful  of  examples  of  the  way  in 
which  words  forget  the  circumstances  of  their  birth. 
Now  if  we  could  believe  in  any  merely  arbitrary 
words,  such,  that  is,  as  stood  in  connection  with 
nothing  but  the  mere  lawless  caprice  of  some  inven- 
tor, the  impossibility  of  tracing  their  derivations 
would  be  nothing  strange.  Indeed  it  would  be  lost 
labor  to  seek  for  the  parentage  of  all  words,  when 
many  perhaps  had  not  any.  But  there  is  no  such 
thing  ;  there  is  no  word  which  is  not,  as  the  Spanish 
gentleman  loves  to  call  himself,  an  "hidalgo,"  the 
son  of  somebody;  all  are  the  embodiment,  more  or 
less  successful,  of  a  sensation,  a  thought,  or  a  fact ; 
or  if  of  more  fortuitous  birth,  still  they  attach  them- 
selves somewhere  to  the  already  subsisting  world  of 
words  and  things,  and  have  their  point  of  contact 
with  it  and  departure  from  it,  not  always  discovera- 
ble, as  we  see,  but  yet  always  existing;  so  that, 
when  a  word  entirely  refuses  to  give  up  the  secret 
of  its  origin,  it  can  be  regarded  in  no  other  light  but 
as  a  riddle  which  no  one  has  succeeded  in  solving, 
a  lock  of  which  no  one  has  found  the  key  —  but  still 
a  riddle  which  has  a  solution,  a  lock  for  which  there 
is  a  key,  though  now,  it  may  be,  irrecoverably  lost. 
And  this  fact  of  the  difficulty,  often  the  impossibili- 
ty of  tracing  the  genealogy  even  of  words  of  a  very 
recent  formation,  is,  as  I  said,  an  evidence  of  the 
birth  at  least  of  these  out  of  the  heart  and  from  the 
lips  of  the  people.  Had  they  had  their  rise  first  in 


WOKDS    BECOME   POPULAR.  155 

books,  then  it  would  be  easily  traced  ;  had  it  been 
from  the  schools  of  the  learned,  these  would  not 
have  failed  to  have  left  a  recognisable  stamp  and 
mark  upon  them. 

But  we  must  conclude.  I  may  have  seemed  in 
this  present  lecture  a  little  to  have  outrun  your  needs, 
and  to  have  sometimes  moved  in  a  sphere  too  remote 
from  that  in  which  your  future  work  will  lie.  Per- 
haps it  may  have  been  so  ;  yet  is  it  in  truth  very  dif- 
ficult to  say  of  any  words  that  they  do  not  touch  us, 
that  they  do  not  reach  us  in  their  influence,  or  in 
some  way  bear  upon  our  studies,  upon  that  which 
we  shall  hereafter  have  to  teach  or  shall  desire  to 
learn ;  that  there  are  any  conquests  which  language 
makes,  that  concern  only  a  few,  and  may  be  regard- 
ed indifferently  by  all  others.  For  it  is  here  as  with 
many  inventions  in  the  arts  and  luxuries  of  life, 
which  being  in  the  beginning  the  exclusive  privilege 
and  possession  of  the  wealthy,  the  cultivated,  the  re- 
fined, do  yet  gradually  descend  into  lower  strata  of 
society,  until  at  length  what  were  once  the  luxuries 
and  elegancies  of  a  few,  have,  become  the  decencies, 
well  nigh  the  necessities  of  all.  Exactly  in  the  same 
manner  there  are  words,  once  only  on  the  lips  of 
philosophers,  or  divines,  of  the  deeper  thinkers  of 
their  time,  or  of  those  interested  in  their  speculations, 
which  yet  step  by  step  have  come  down,  not  deba- 
sing themselves  in  this  act  of  becoming  popular,  but 
training  and  elevating  more  and  more  to  understand 


156  THE  KISE   OF   NEW   WORDS. 

and  embrace  their  meaning,  till  at  length  they  have 
become  truly  a  part  of  the  nation's  common  stock, 
household  words  used  naturally  and  easily  by  all. 

And  I  know  not  how  I  can  better  conclude  this 
lecture  than  by  quoting  some  words  which  express 
with  a  rare  eloquence  all  which  I  have  been  labor- 
ing to  utter :  for  this  truth,  which  many  indeed  have 
noticed,  none  that  I  am  aware  of  have  set  forth  with 
at  all  the  same  fullness  of  illustration,  or  laying  upon 
it  at  all  the  same  stress,  as  the  author  of  The  Phil- 
osophy of  the  Inductive  Sciences,  whose  words  now 
quoted  are  but  one  out  of  many  passages  on  the  same 
theme  :  "  Language  is  often  called  an  instrument  of 
thought,  but  it  is  also  the  nutriment  of  thought ;  or, 
rather,  it  is  the  atmosphere  in  which  thought  lives ;  a 
medium  essential  to  the  activity  of  our  speculative 
powers,  although  invisible  and  imperceptible  in  its 
operation ;  and  an  element  modifying,  by  its  qualities 
and  changes,  the  growth  and  complexion  of  the  fac- 
ulties which  it  feeds.  In  this  way  the  influence  of 
preceding  discoveries  upon  subsequent  ones,  of  the 
past  upon  the  present,  |s  most  penetrating  and  uni- 
versal, although  most  subtle  and  difficult  to  trace. 
The  most  familiar  words  and  phrases  are  connected 
by  imperceptible  ties  with  the  reasonings  and  dis- 
coveries of  former  men  and  distant  times.  Their 
knowledge  is  an  inseparable  part  of  ours ;  the  present 
generation  inherits  and  uses  the  scientific  wealth  of 
all  the  past.  And  this  is  the  fortune,  not  only  of  the 


PAST   ACQUISITIONS    OURS.  157 

great  and  rich  in  the  intellectual  world,  of  those  who 
have  the  key  to  the  ancient  storehouses,  and  who  have 
accumulated  treasures  of  their  own,  but  the  humblest 
inquirer,  while  he  puts  his  reasonings  into  words, 
benefits  by  the  labors  of  the  greatest.  "When  he 
counts  his  little  wealth  he  finds  he  has  in  his  hands 
coins  which  bear  the  image  and  superscription  of 
ancient  and  modern  intellectual  dynasties,  and  that 
in  virtue  of  this  possession  acquisitions  are  in  his 
power,  solid  knowledge  within  his  reach,  which  none 
could  ever  have  attained  to,  if  it  were  not  that  the 
gold  of  truth  once  dug  out  of  the  mine  circulates 
more  and  more  widely  among  mankind." 


LECTURE   ^. 

THE   DISTINCTION   OF  WOKDS. 

IT  is  to  the  subject  of  synonyms  and  their  distinc- 
tion, with  the  advantages  which  may  be  derived 
from  the  study  of  these  that  I  propose  to  devote  the 
present  lecture.  But  what,  it  may  be  asked,  do  we 
mean,  when,  comparing  certain  words  with  one  an- 
other, we  affirm  of  them  that  they  are  synonyms  ? 
It  is  meant  that  they  are  words  which,  with  great 
and  essential  resemblances  of  meaning,  have  at  the 
same  time  small,  subordinate,  and  partial  differences 
—  these  differences  being  such  as  either  originally, 
and  on  the  ground  of  their  etymology,  inhered  in 
them ;  or  differences  which  they  have  by  usage  ac- 
quired in  the  eyes  of  all ;  or  such  as,  though  nearly 
latent  now,  they  are  capable  of  receiving  at  the  hands 
of  wise  and  discreet  masters  of  the  tongue.  Syno- 
nyms are  words  of  like  significance  in  the  main,  but 
with  a  certain  unlikeness  as  well. 

So  soon  as  the  term  is  defined  thus,  it  will  be  at 
once  perceived  by  any  acquainted  with  the  deriva- 
tion, that  strictly  speaking,  it  is  a  misnomer,  and  is 
given  to  these  words  with  a  certain  inaccuracy  and  im- 


DEFINITION   OF   SYNONYMS.  159 

propriety ;  since  in  strictness  the  terms  "  synonyms," 
or  "  synonymous,"  applied  to  words,  would  affirm  of 
them  that  they  covered  not  merely  almost  the  same 
extent  of  meaning,  but  altogether  and  exactly  the 
same,  that  they  were  in  their  signification  perfectly 
identical  and  coincident.  The  terms,  however,  are 
not  ordinarily  so  used,  and  plainly  are  not  so,  when 
it  is  undertaken  to  trace  out  the  distinction  between 
synonyms  ;  for,  without  denying  that  there  are  such 
absolutely  coincident  words,  such  perfect  synonyms, 
yet  these  could  not  be  the  object  of  any  such  discrimi- 
nation ;  since,  where  there  was  no  real  distinction,  it 
would  be  lost  labor  and  the  exercise  of  a  perverse  in- 
genuity to  attempt  to  ,draw  one.  Synonyms,  then 
as  the  word  is  generally  understood,  and  as  I  shall 
use  it  here,  are  words  with  slighter  differences  al- 
ready existing  between  them,  or  with  the  capabilities 
of  such  :  neither  on  the  one  side  absolutely  identical ; 
but  neither  we  may  add,  on  the  other  only  very  re- 
motely related  to  one  another;  for  the  differences 
between  these  last  will  be  self-evident,  will  so  lie  on 
the  surface  and  proclaim  themselves  to  all,  that  it 
would  be  impossible  to  make  them  clearer  than  they 
already  are,  and  it  would  be  like  holding  a  candle 
to  the  sun  to  attempt  it.  They  must  be  words  which 
are  more  or  less  liable  to  confusion,  but  which  yet 
ought  not  to  be  confounded  ;  words,  as  one  has  said, 
"  quse  conjnngi,  non  confundi,  debent ;"  words  in 
which  there  originally  inhered  a  difference,  or  be- 


160  THE   DISTINCTION    OF   WOKDS. 

tween  which,  though  once  absolutely  identical,  such 
has  gradually  grown  up,  and  so  established  itself  in 
the  use  of  the  best  writers,  and  in  the  instinct  of  the 
best  speakers  of  the  tongue,  that  it  claims  to  be  rec- 
ognised and  openly  admitted  by  rfll. 

But  here  an  interesting  question  presents  itself  to 
us,  which  is  this  :  How  do  languages  come  to  possess 
synonyms  of  this  latter  class,  which  are  differenced 
not  by  etymology  or  other  deep-lying  and  necessary 
distinction,  but  only  by  usage  2  Now  if  they  had 
been  made  by  agreement,  of  course  no  such  words 
could  exist ;  for  when  one  word  had  been  found  which 
was  the  adequate  representative  of  a  feeling  or  an 
object,  no  further  one  would  have  been  sought.  But* 
languages  are  the  result  of  processes  very  different 
from,  and  far  less  formal  and  regular  than  this. 
Yarions  tribes,  each  with  its  own  dialect,  kindred 
indeed,  but  in  many  respects  distinct,  coalesce  into 
one  people,  and  cast  their  contributions  of  language 
into  a  common  stock ;  sometimes  two  have  the  same 
word,  but  in  forms  sufficiently  different  to  cause  that 
both  remain,  but  as  different  words ;  thus  in  Latin, 
"  serpo"  and  "  repo"  are  merely  two  slightly  differ- 
ent appropriations  of  the  same  Greek  word,  and  of 
"  puteo"  and  "  foeteo"  the  same  may  be  said ;  thus 
too  in  German,  "  odem"  and  "  athem,"  were  origi- 
nally but  different  formations  of  the  same  word.  Or 
again,  a  conquering  people  have  fixed  themselves  in 
the  midst  of  a  conquered  ;  they  impose  their  domin- 


WOKDS    IMPORTED   FROM    A.BKOAD.  161 

x>n,  but  do  not  succeed  in  imposing  theiT  language ; 
nay,  being  few  in  number,  they  find  themselves  at 
last  compelled  to  adopt  the  language  of  the  con- 
quered ;  or  after  a  while  that  which  may  be  called  a 
transaction,  a  compromise  between  the  two  languages, 
finds  place.  Thus  was  it  in  England  ;  our  modern 
English  being  in  the  main  such  a  compromise  be- 
tween the  Anglo-Saxon  and  the  Norman-French. 

These  are  causes  of  the  existence  of  synonyms 
which  reach  far  back  into  the  history  of  a  nation  and 
a  language ;  but  other  causes  at  a  later  period  are 
also  at  work.  When  a  written  literature  springs  up, 
authors  familiar  with  various  foreign  tongues,  import 
from  one  and  another  words  which  are  not  absolute- 
ly required,  which  are  oftentimes  rather  luxuries  than 
necessities.  Sometimes  having  a  very  good  word  of 
their  own,  they  must  yet  needs  go  and  look  for  a  finer 
one,  as  they  esteem  it,  from  abroad ;  as,  for  instance, 
the  Latin  having  its  own  good  and  expressive  "  suc- 
cinum"  (from  "succus"),  for  "amber,"  some  must 
import  from  the  Greek  the  ambiguous  "  electrum." 
But  of  these  which  are  thus  proposed  as  candidates 
for  admission,  some  fail  to  receive  the  rights  of  citizen- 
ship, and  after  longer  or  shorter  probation  are  reject- 
ed ;  it  may  be,  never  advance  beyond  their  first  pro- 
poser. Enough,  however,  receive  the  stamp  of  pop- 
ular allowance  to  create  embarrassment  for  a  while, 
and  until  their  relations  with  the  already  existing 
words  are  adjusted.  As  a  single  illustration  of  the 


162  THE   DISTINCTION   OF   WORDS. 

various  quarters  from  which  the  English  has  thus 
been  augmented,  and  in  the  end  enriched,  I  would 
instance  the  words  "trick,"  "device,"  "finesse," 
"  artifice,"  and  "  stratagem,"  and  enumerate  the  va- 
rious sources  from  which  we  have  gotten  these  words. 
Here  "  trick"  is  Saxon,  "  devisa"  is  Italian,  "  finesse" 
is  French,  "  artificium"  is  Latin,  and  "  stratagema" 
Greek. 

By-and-by,  however,  as  a  language  becomes  it- 
self more  an  object  of  attention,  at  the  same  time  that 
society,  advancing  from  a  simpler  to  a  more  complex 
state,  has  more  things  to  designate  and  thoughts  to 
utter,  it  is  felt  to  be  a  waste  of  2*esources  to  have  two 
or  more  words  for  the  signifying  of  one  and  the  same 
object.  Men  feel,  and  rightly,  that  with  a  boundless 
world  lying  around  them  and  demanding  to  be 
named,  and  which  they  only  make  their  own  in  the 
measure  that  they  do  name  it,  with  infinite  shades 
and  varieties  of  thought  and  feeling  subsisting  in  their 
own  minds,  and  claiming  to  find  utterance  in  words, 
it  is  a  mere  and  wanton  extravagance  to  expend  two 
or  more  signs  on  that  which  could  adequately  be  set 
forth  by  one — an  extravagance  in  one  part  of  their 
expenditure,  which  would  be  almost  sure  to  issue  in, 
and  to  be  punished  by,  a  too  great  scantness  and 
Btraitness  in  another.  Some  thought  or  feeling  would 
be  certain  to  want  its  adequate  sign  because  another 
ha?  wo.  Hereupon  that  which  has  been  well  called 
f  orocess  of  "  desynonymizing"  begins — that  is 


WORDS    DESYNONYMIZED.  163 

of  gradually  coming  to  discriminate  in  use  between 
words  which  have  hitherto  been  accounted  perfectly 
equivalent,  and,  as  such,  indifferently  employed.  It 
is  a  positive  enriching  of  a  language  when  this  pro- 
cess is  felt  to  be  accomplished,  when  two  or  more 
words  which  were  once  promiscuously  used,  are  felt 
to  have  had  each  its  own  peculiar  domain  assigned 
to  it,  which  it  shall  not  itself  overstep,  upon  which 
the  others  shall  not  encroach.  This  may  seem  at 
first  sight  but  as  the  better  regulation  of  old  territory ; 
for  all  practical  purposes  it  is  the  acquisition  of  new. 
It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  this  desynonymizing 
process  is  effected  according  to  any  pre-arranged 
purpose  or  plan.  The  working  genius  of  the  lan- 
guage accomplishes  its  own  objects,  causes  these  sy- 
nonymous words  insensibly  to  fall  off  from  one  an- 
other, and  to  acquire  separate  and  peculiar  meanings. 
The  most  that  any  single  writer  can  do,  save  indeed 
in  matters  of  science,  is,  as  has  been  observed,  to 
assist  an  already  existing  inclination,  to  bring  to  the 
consciousness  of  all  that  which  may  already  have 
been  implicitly  felt  by  many,  and  thus  to  hasten  the 
process  of  this  disengagement,  or,  as  it  has  been  ex- 
cellently expressed,  "  to  regulate  and  ordinate  the 
evident  nisus  and  tendency  of  the  popular  usage 
into  a  severe  definition ;"  and  establish  on  a  firm 
basis  the  distinction,  so  that  it  shall  not  be  lost  sight 
of,  or  brought  into  question  again.  This,  for  instance, 
Wordsworth  did  in  respect  of  the  words  "imagina- 


164  THE   DISTINCTION   OF   WOBDS. 

tion"  and  "  fancy."  Before  he  wrote,  it  was,  I  sup- 
pose, obscurely  felt  by  most  that  in  "  imagination" 
there  was  more  of  the  earnest,  in  "  fancy"  of  the  play 
of  the  spirit,  that  the  first  was  a  loftier  faculty  and 
gift  than  the  second  ;  yet  for  all  this  the  words  were 
continually,  and  not  without  loss,  confounded.  He 
first,  in  the  preface  to  his  Lyrical  Ballads,  rendered 
it  henceforth  impossible  that  any  one,  who  had  read 
and  mastered  what  he  had  written  on  the  two  words, 
should  remain  unconscious  any  longer  of  the  impor- 
tant difference  existing  between  them.* 

*  I  had  read  a  great  many  years  ago,  in  The  Opium  Eater's  Let- 
ters to  a  Young  Man  whose  Education  has  been  neglected,  a  passage 
•which  I  had  still  clearly  in  my  mind  while  writing  the  above.  I 
have  now  recovered  this  passage,  which,  though  it  only  says  over 
again  what  is  said  above,  yet  does  this  so  much  more  forcibly  and 
fully,  that  I  shall  not  hesitate  to  qnote  it,  and  the  more  readily  that 
these  letters,  in  many  respects  so  valuable,  have  never  been  reprint- 
ed, but  lie  buried  in  the  old  numbers  of  a  magazine,  like  so  many 
other  of  the  "disjecta  membra"  of  this  illustrious  master  of  English 
prose.  "  All  languages,"  he  says,  "tend  to  clear  themselves  of  syno- 
nyms, as  intellectual  culture  advances ;  the  superfluous  words  being 
taken  up  and  appropriated  by  new  shades  and  combinations  of 
thought  evolved  in  the  progress  of  society.  And  long  before  this 
appropriation  is  fixed  and  petrified,  as  it  were,  into  the  acknowl- 
edged vocabulary  of  the  language,  an  insensible  clinamen  (to  borrow 
a  Lucretian  word)  prepares  the  way  for  it  Thus,  for  instance,  be- 
fore Mr.  Wordsworth  had  unveiled  the  great  philosophic  distinction 
between  the  powers  of  fancy  and  imagination,  the  two  words  had 
begun  to  diverge  from  each  other,  the  first  being  used  to  express  a 
faculty  somewhat  capricious  and  exempted  from  law,  the  other  to 
express  a  faculty  more  self-determined.  When,  therefore,  it  was  at 
length  perceived,  that  under  an  apparent  unity  of  meaning  there 
lurked  a  real  dualism,  and  for  philosophic  purposes  it  was  necessary 
that  this  distinction  should  have  its  appropriate  expression,  this  ne- 
ceeaity  was  met  half  way  by  the  clinamen  which  had  already  affected 


REVENGE,    VENGEANCE.  165 

Let  me  remark  by  the  way  how  many  other  words 
in  English  are  still  waiting  for  such  a  discrimination. 
What  an  ethical  gain,  for  instance,  would  it  be,  how 
much  clearness  would  it  bring  into  men's  thoughts 
and  feelings,  if  the  distinction  which  exists  in  Latin 
between  "  vindicta"  and  "  ultio,"  that  the  first  is  a 
moral  act,  the  just  punishment  of  the  sinner  by  his 
God,  of  the  criminal  by  the  judge,  the  other  an  act 
in  which  the  self-gratification  of  one  who  counts 
himself  injured  or  offended  is  sought,  could  in  like 
manner  be  established  between  "  vengeance"  and 
"  revenge,"  so  that  only  "  vengeance"  (with  the  verb 
"  avenge")  should  be  ascribed  to  God,  and  to  men 
acting  as  the  executors  of  his  righteous  doom  ;  while 
all  in  which  their  evil  and  sinful  passions  are  the 
impulsive  motive  should  be  exclusively  termed  "  re- 
venge." As  it  now  is,  the  moral  disapprobation 
which  cleaves,  and  cleaves  justly,  to  "  revenge,"  is 
oftentimes  transferred  almost  unconsciously  to  "  ven- 
geance ;"  while  yet  without  vengeance  it  is  impossi- 
ble to  conceive  in  an  evil  world  any  assertion  of 

the  popular  usage  of  the  words."  Compare  with  this  what  Coleridge 
had  before  said  upon  the  subject,  Biog.  Lit.,  v.  1,  p.  90.  It  is  to 
Coleridge  we  owe  the  word  "  desynonymize,"  and  his  own  contribu- 
tions direct  and  indirect  in  this  province  are  perhaps  both  more  in 
number,  and  more  important,  than  those  of  any  modern  English  wri- 
ter, as  for  instance  the  disentanglement  of  "  fanaticism"  and  "  enthu- 
siasm," which  we  mainly  owe  to  him  (Lit.  Rem.,  v.  2,  p.  365),  and 
of  other  words  not  a  few ;  as  "  ke'enness"  and  "  subtlety"  (Table  Talk, 
p.  140),  "poetry"  and  "poesy"  (Lit.  Rem.,  v.  1,  p.  219);  and  that  on 
which  he  himself  laid  so  great  a  stress,  "  reason"  and  "  understand- 
ing." 


166  THE   DISTINCTION   OF   WORDS. 

righteousness,  any  moral  government  whatsoever. 
These  distinctions  which  still  wait  to  be  made  we 
may  fitly  regard  "  as  so  much  reversionary  wealth 
in  our  mother-tongue." 

The  two  causes  which  I  mentioned  above,  the  fact 
that  English  is  in  the  main  a  compromise  between 
the  languages  spoken  by  the  Anglo-Saxon  and  the 
Norman,  and  the  further  circumstance  that  it  has  re- 
ceived, welcomed,  and  found  place  for  many  later 
additions,  these  causes  have  together  effected  that 
we  possess  in  English  a  great  many  duplicates,  not 
to  speak  of  triplicates,  or  even  such  a  quintuplicate 
as  that  which  I  adduced  just  now,  where  the  Saxon, 
French,  Italian,  Latin,  and  Greek,  had  each  given 
us  a  word.  Let  me  mention  a  few  duplicate  sub- 
stantives, Anglo-Saxon  and  Latin ;  thus  we  have 
"  shepherd"  and  "  pastor ;"  "  feeling"  and  "  senti- 
ment ;"  "  handbook"  and  "  manual ;"  "  shire"  and 
"county  ;"  "ship"  and  "nave  ;"  "anger"  and  "ire;" 
"grief"  and  "dolor;"  "feather"  and  "plume;" 
"  love"  and  "  charity  ;"  forerunner"  and  "  precur- 
sor ;"  "  freedom"  and  "  liberty  ;"  "  murder"  and 
"homicide;"  "moons"  and  "  lunes"  —  a  word 
which  has  not  been  met  with  in  the  singular.  Some- 
times, in  science  and  theology  especially,  we  have 
gone  both  to  the  Latin  and  to  the  Greek,  and  drawn 
the  same  word  from  them  both  ;  thus  "  deist"  and 
"  theist ;"  "  numeration"  and  "  arithmetic  ;"  "  Reve- 
lation" and  "  Apocalypse  ;"  "  temporal"  and  "  chron- 


LATIN   AND   ANGLO-SAXON    WORDS.  167 

ical;"  "compassion"  and  "sympathy;"  "supposi- 
tion" and  "  hypothesis."  But  'to  return  to  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  and  Latin,  the  main  factors  of  our  tongue,  bo- 
side  duplicate  substantives,  we  have  duplicate  verbs, 
such  as  "  to  heal"  and  "  to  cure  ;"  "  to  whiten"  and 
"  to  blanch  ;"  "  to  soften"  and  "  to  mollify  ;"  "  to 
cloak"  and  "  to  palliate  ;"  with  many  more. 

Duplicate  adjectives  also  are  numerous,  as 
"  shady"  and  "  umbrageous  ;"  "  unreadable"  and 
"  illegible  ;"  "  almighty"  and  "  omnipotent."  Occa- 
sionally where  only  one  substantive,  an  Anglo-Saxon, 
exists,  yet  the  adjectives  are  duplicate,  and  the  Eng- 
lish, which  has  not  adopted  the  Latin  substantive, 
has  yet  admitted  the  adjective ;  thus  "  burden"  has 
not  merely  "  burdensome"  but  also  "  onerous,"  while 
yet  "  onus"  has  found  no  place  with  us ;  "  priest" 
has  "  priestly"  and  "  sacerdotal ;"  "  king"  has 
'•  kingly,"  "  regal,"  which  is  purely  Latin,  and 
"  royal,"  which  is  Latin  distilled  through  the  Nor- 
man. "Bodily"  and  "corporal,"  "boyish"  and 
"  puerile,"  "  bloody"  and  "  sanguine,"  "  fearful" 
and  "  timid,"  "  manly"  and  "  virile,"  "  womanly" 
and  "  feminine,"  "  starry"  and  "  stellar,"  "  yearly" 
and  "  annual,''1  may  all  be  placed  in  the  same  list. 
Nor  are  these  more  than  a  handful  of  words  out  of 
the  number  which  might  be  adduced,  and  I  think 
you  would  find  both  pleasure  and  profit  in  seeking 
to  add  to  these  lists,  and  as  far  as  you  are  able,  to 
make  them  gradually  complete. 


v 

168  THE   DISTINCTION    OF   WOKDS. 

I  will  observe  by  the  way,  that  I  have  only  ad- 
duced instances  in  which  both  the  words  have  con- 
tinued to  maintain  their  ground  in  our  spoken  and 
written  language  to  the  present  day.  Other  cases 
are  not  few  in  which  these  duplicates  once  existed, 
but  in  which  the  one  word  has  in  the  end  proved 
fatal  to,  and  has  extinguished  the  other.  Thus  "  res- 
urrection" and  "  againrising"  no  doubt  existed  con- 
temporaneously ;  Wiclif  uses  them  indifferently  ;  we 
may  say  the  same  of  "judge"  and  "doomsman," 
"  adultery"  and  "  spouse-breach,"  and  of  many 
words  more.  In  each  of  these  cases,  however,  in- 
stead of  dividing  the  intellectual  domain  between 
them,  which  perhaps  would  not  always  have  been 
easy,  the  one  word  has  definitively  put  the  other 
out  of  use ;  the  Latin  word,  as  you  will  observe,  has 
triumphed  over  the  Anglo-Saxon.  I  am  not  of  those 
who  consider  these  triumphs  of  the  Latin  element  of 
our  speech  to  be  in  every  case  a  matter  of  regret ; 
though  I  would  not  willingly  have  seen  "  pavone," 
which  Spenser  would  have  introduced,  for  our  much 
older  "  peacock ;"  or  "  terremote,"  which  Gower  em- 
ploys, for  "  earthquake,"  or  other  such  Latinisms  as 
these. 

But  to  return  ;  if  we  look  closely  at  those  other 
words  which  have  succeeded  in  maintaining  side  by 
side  their  ground,  we  shall  not  fail  to  observe  that 
in  almost  every  instance  they  have  vindicated  for 
themselves  separate  spheres  of  meaning,  that  al- 


SEPARATE   SPHERES    OF   MEANING.  169 

though  not,  in  etymology,  they  have  still  in  use  be- 
come more  or  less  distinct.  Thus  we  use  "shep- 
herd" almost  always  in  its  primary  meaning,  keeper 
of  sheep ;  while  "  pastor"  is  exclusively  used  in  the 
tropical  sense,  one  that  feeds  the  flock  of  God ;  at  the 
same  time  the  language  having  only  the  one  adjec- 
tive, "  pastoral,"  that  is  of  necessity  common  to  both. 
"  Love"  and  "  charity"  are  used  in  our  authorized 
version  of  the  ]S"ew  Testament  promiscuously,  and 
out  of  the  sense  of  their  equivalence  are  made  to 
represent  one  and  the  same  Greek  word ;  but  in 
modern  use  "  charity"  has  come  almost  exclusively 
to  signify  one  particular  manifestation  of  love,  the 
supply  of  the  bodily  needs  of  others,  "  love"  continu- 
ing to  express  the  affection  of  the  soul.  "  Ship"  re- 
mains in  its  literal  meaning,  while  "  nave"  has  be- 
come a  symbolic  term  used  in  sacred  architecture 
alone.  So  with  "  illegible"  and  "  unreadable,"  the 
first  is  applied  to  the  hand-writing,  the  second  to  the 
subject-matter  written ;  thus,  a  man  writes  an  "  il- 
legible" hand ;  he  has  published  an  "  unreadable" 
book.  So,  too,  it  well  becomes  boys  to  be  "  boyish," 
but  not  men  to  be  "  puerile."  Or  take  "  to  blanch" 
and  "  to  whiten  ;"  we  have  grown  to  use  the  first  in 
the  sense  of  to  withdraw  coloring  matter :  thus  we 
"blanch"  almonds  or  linen ;  the  cheek  is  "blanched" 
with  fear,  that  is,  by  the  withdrawing  of  the  blood ; 
but  we  "  whiten"  a  wall,  not  by  the  withdrawing  of 
some  other  color,  but  by  the  superinducing  of  white ; 


170  THE   DISTINCTION    OF   WORDS. 

thus  "  whited  sepulchres."  "  To  palliate"  is  not  now 
used,  though  it  once  was,  in  the  sense  of  wholly 
cloaking  or  covering  over,  as  it  might  be,  our  sins, 
but  in  that  of  extenuating ;  "  to  palliate"  our  faults 
is  not  to  hide  them  altogether,  but  to  seek  to  dimin- 
ish their  guilt  in  part. 

It  might  be  urged  that  there  was  a  certain  pre- 
paredness in  these  words  to  separate  off  in  their 
meaning  from  one  another,  inasmuch  as  they  origi- 
nally belonged  to  different  stocks  ;  nor  would  I  say 
that  it  was  not  so,  nor  deny  that  this  may  have  as- 
sisted ;  but  we  find  the  same  process  at  work  where 
difference  of  stock  can  have  supplied  no  such  assist- 
ance. "  Astronomy"  and  "  astrology"  are  both 
drawn  from  the  Greek,  nor  is  there  any  reason  be- 
forehand why  the  second  should  not  be  in  as  honor- 
able use  as  the  first ;  for  it  signifies  the  reason,  as 
astronomy  the  law,  of  the  stars.  But  seeing  there  is 
a  true  and  a  false  science  of  the  stars,  both  needing 
words  to  utter  them,  it  has  come  to  pass  that  in  our 
later  use,  "  astrology"  designates  always  that  pre- 
tended science  of  imposture,  which  affecting  to  sub- 
mit the  moral  freedom  of  men  to  the  influences  of 
the  heavenly  bodies,  prognosticates  future  events 
from  the  position  of  these,  as  contrasted  with  "  as- 
tronomy," that  true  science  which  investigates  the 
laws  of  the  heavenly  bodies  in  their  relations  to  one 
another  and  to  the  planet  upon  which  we  dwell. 

As  these  are  both  from  the  Greek,  so  "  despair," 


DIFFIDENCE,    DESPAIR.  171 

and  "  diffidence"  are  both,  though  the  second  more 
directly  than  the  first,  from  the  'Latin.  At  a  period 
not  very  long  past  the  difference  between  them  was 
hardly  appreciable ;  it  certainly  could  not  be  affirm- 
ed of  one  that  it  was  very  much  stronger  than  the 
other.  If  in  one  the  absence  of  all  hope^n  the 
other  that  of  all  faith,  was  implied.  In  proof  I 
would  only  refer  you  to  a  book  with  which  I  am 
sure  every  English  schoolmaster  will  wish  to  be  fa- 
miliar, I  mean  The  Pilgrim's  Progress,  where  Mis- 
tress "  Diffidence"  is  Giant  "  Despair's"  wife,  and 
not  a  whit  behind  him  in  her  deadly  enmity  to  the 
pilgrims  ;  even  as  Jeremy  Taylor  speaks  of  the  im- 
penitent sinner's  "  diffidence"  in  the  hour  of  death, 
meaning,  as  the  context  plainly  shows,  his  despair. 
But  to  what  end  two  words  for  one  and  the  same 
thing  ?  And  thus  "  diffidence"  did  not  retain  that 
force  of  meaning  which  it  had  at  the  first,  but  little 
by  little  assumed  a  more  mitigated  sense  (Hobbes 
speaks  of  "  men's  diffidence,"  that  is  distrust,  "  of 
one  another"),  till  it  has  come  in  our  present  Eng- 
lish to  signify  a  becoming  distrust  of  ourselves,  an 
humble  estimate  of  our  own  powers,  with  only  a 
slight  intimation  in  the  word,  that  perhaps  this  dis- 
trust is  carried  too  far. 

Again, "  interference"  and  "  interposition"  are  both 
from  the  Latin ;  and  here  too  it  lies  not  by  any  an- 
terior necessity  in  the  several  derivations  of  the  words, 
that  they  should  have  the  different  shades  of  mean- 


172  THE   DISTINCTION    OF   WORDS. 

ing  which  yet  they  have  obtained  among  us :  tha 
Latin  verbs  which  form  their  latter  halves  being  about 
as  strong  one  as  the  other.  And  yet  in  our  practical 
use,  "  interference"  is  something  offensive ;  it  is  the 
pushing  in  of  himself  between  two  parties  on  the  part 
of  a  third,  who  was  not  asked,  and  is  not  thanked 
for  his  pains,  and  who,  as  the  feeling  of  the  word 
implies,  had  no  business  there ;  while  "  interposition" 
is  employed  to  express  the  friendly  peacemaking 
mediation  of  one  whom  the  act  well  became,  and  who, 
even  if  he  was  not  specially  invited  thereunto,  is  still 
thanked  for  what  he  has  done.  How  real  an  increase 
is  it  in  the  wealth  and  capabilities  of  a  language  thus 
to  have  discriminated  such  words  as  these ;  and  to 
be  able  to  express  acts  outwardly  the  same  by  differ- 
ent words,  as  we  would  praise  or  blame  them.* 

But  these  which  I  have  named  are  not  the  only 
desynonymizing  processes  which  are  going  forward 
in  a  language ;  for  we  may  observe  in  almost  all  lan- 

*  It  must  at  the  same  time  be  acknowledged,  that  if  in  the  course 
of  time  distinctions  are  thus  created,  and  if  this  is  the  tendency  of 
language,  yet  they  are  also  sometimes,  though  far  less  often,  obliter- 
ated. Thus  the  fine  distinction  between  "yea"  and  "yes,"  "  nay"  and 
"  no,"  that  once  existed  in  English  has  quite  disappeared.  "  Yea" 
and  "  nay,"  in  Wiclifs  time,  and  a  good  deal  later,  were  the  answers 
to  questions  framed  in  the  affirmative.  "  Will  he  come  ?"  To  this 
it  would  have  been  replied,  •'  Yea"  or  "  Nay,"  as  the  case  might  be. 
But,  "Will  he  not  comef"  —  to  this  the  answer  would  have  been, 
"  Yes,"  or  "  No."  Sir  Thomas  More  finds  fault  with  Tyndale,  that 
in  his  translation  of  the  Bible  he  had  :%pt  observed  this  distinction, 
which  was  evidently  therefore  going  out  even  then,  that  is  in  the 
reign  of  Henry  VIH. ;  and  shortly  after  it  was  quite  forgotten. 


DIFFERENT   SPELLING    OF   WORDS.  173 

guages,  and  not  the  least  in  our  own,  a  tendency  to 
the  formation  of  new  words  out' of  what  were  at  the 
first  no  more  than  different  pronunciations,  or  even 
slightly  different  spellings,  of  one  and  the  same 
word  ;  which  yet  in  the  end  detach  themselves  from 
one  another,  not  again  to  reunite ;  just  as  accidental 
varieties  in  fruits  or  flowers,  produced  at  hazard,  have 
yet  permanently  separated  off  and  settled  into  dif- 
ferent kinds.  Sometimes  as  the  accent  is  placed  on 
one  syllable  of  a  word  or  another,  it  comes  to  have 
different  significations,  and  those  so  distinctly  marked 
that  it  may  be  considered  out  of  one  word  to  have 
grown  into  two.  Examples  of  this  are  the  following  : 
"  divers"  and  "  diverse  ;"  "  conjure"  and  "  conjure ;" 
"  antic"  and  "  antique  ;"  "  human"  and  "  humane  ;" 
"  gentle"  and  "  genteel ;"  "  custom"  and  "  custume  ;" 
"  essay"  and  "  assdy ;"  "  property"  and  "  propriety." 
Again  a  word  is  pronounced  with  a  full  sound  of  its 
syllables  or  more  shortly:  thus  "  spirit"  and  "  spright ;" 
"  blossom"  and  "  bloom  ;"  "  piety"  and  "  pity ;"  "  cour- 
tesy" and  "  curtsey ;""  personality"  and  "personal- 
ty;" "fantasy"  and  "fancy;"  "triumph"  and 
"  trump"  (the  winning  card)  ;*  "  happily"  and  "  hap- 
ly ;"  "  eremite"  and  "  hermit ;"  "  poesy"  and  "  posy  ;" 
or  with  the  dropping  of  the  first  syllable  :  "  history" 
and  "story;"  "etiquette"  and  "ticket;"  "estate" 

*  If  there  were  any  doubt  about  this  matter,  which  indeed  ther« 
is  not,  a  reference  to  Latimer's  famous  Sermon  on  Cards  would  abun- 
dantly remove  it,  where  "triumph"  and  "trump"  art.  interchangea- 
bly used. 


174  THE   DISTINCTION   OF   WORDS. 

and  "state;" — or  without  losing  a  syllable,  with 
more  or  less  stress  laid  on  the  close  :  "  regiment"  and 
"  regimen  ;"  "  corpse"  and  "  corps ;"  "  bite"  and 
"bit;"  "sire"  and  "sir;"  "stripe"  and  "strip;" 
"  borne"  and  "  born  ;"  "  clothes"  and  "  cloths."  Or 
there  has  grown  up  some  other  slight  distinction,  as 
between  "ghostly"  and  "ghastly;"  "utter"  and 
"outer;"  "mettle"  and  "metal;"  "parson"  and 
"  person  ;"  "  ingenious"  and  "  ingenuous ;"  "  prune" 
and  "  preen ;"  "  mister"  and  "  master ;"  "  villain" 
and  "villein;"  "cleft"  and  "clift,"  now  written 
"  cliff;"  " cure"  and  " care ;"  "travel"  and  "travail ;" 
"  pennon"  and  "  pinion  ;"  "  can"  and  "  ken ;"  "  oaf" 
and  "elf;"  "gambol"  and  "gamble;"  "truth"  and 
"troth;"  "quay"  and  "key;"  "lose"  and  "loose;" 
"  cant"  and  "  chant ;"  "  price"  and  "  prize ;"  "  errant" 
and  "  arrant ;"  "  benefit"  and  "  benefice  ;"*  I  do  not 
kndw  whether  we  ought  to  add  to  these,  "news"  and 
"  noise,"  which  some  tell  us  to  be  the  same  word ; 

*  "Were  there  need  of  proving  that  these  both  lie  in  "beneficium," 
which  there  is  not,  for  in  Wiclif  s  translation  of  the  Bible  the  dis- 
tinction is  still  latent  (1  Tim.  vL  2),  one  might  adduce  a  singularly 
characteristic  little  trait  of  papal  policy  which  once  turned  upon  the 
double  use  of  this  word.  Pope  Adrian  the  Fourth  writing  to  the 
emperor  Frederic  the  First  to  complain  of  certain  conduct  of  his,  re- 
minded the  emperor  that  he  had  placed  the  imperial  crown  upon  his 
head,  and  would  willingly  have  conferred  even  greater  "  beneficia" 
upon  him  than  this.  Had  the  word  been  allowed  to  pass,  it  would 
no  doubt  have  been  afterward  appealed  to  as  an  admission  on  the 
part  of  the  great  emperor  that  he  held  the  empire  as  a  feud  or  fief 
(for  "  benencium"  was  then  the  technical  word  for  this,  though  the 
meaning  has  much  narrowed  since),  from  the  pope — the  very  point 
»u  dispute  between  them.  The  word  was  indignantly  repelled  \ar 


ANTIC,    ANTIQUE HUMAN,    HUMANE.  175 

at  any  rate  the  identifying  of  them  is  instructive,  for 
how  much  news  is  but  noise,1  and  passes  away  like 
a  noise  before  long.  Or,  it  may  be,  the  difference 
which  constitutes  the  two  forms  of  the  word  into  two 
words  is  one  in  the  spelling,  and  so  slight  a  one  even 
there  as  to  be  appreciable  only  by  the  eye,  and  to 
escape  altogether  the  ear :  thus  is  it  with  "  draft" 
and  "  draught ;"  "  plain"  and  "  plane ;"  "  flower"  and 
"  flour ;"  "  check"  and  "  cheque." 

ISTow  if  you  will  follow  up  these  instances,  you 
will  find,  I  believe,  in  every  case  that  there  has 
attached  itself  to  the  different  forms  of  the  words  a 
modification  of  meaning  more  or  less  sensible,  that 
each  has  won  for  itself  an  independent  sphere  of 
meaning,  in  which  it,  and  it  only,  moves.  For  take 
a  few  instances  in  proof.  "  Divers"  implies  differ- 
ence only,  but  "  diverse"  difference  with  opposition  ; 
thus  the  several  evangelists  narrate  the  same  events 
in  "  divers"  manners,  but  not  in  "  diverse."  "  An- 
tique" is  ancient,  but  "  antic"  is  now  the  ancient  re- 
garded as  overlived,  out  of  date,  and  so  in  our  days 
grotesque,  ridiculous ;  and  then,  with  a  dropping  of 
the  reference  to  age,  the  grotesque,  the  ridiculous 
alone.  "  Human"  is  what  every  man  is,  "  humane" 
is  what  every  man  ought  to  be ;  for  Johnson's  sug- 

the  emperor  and  the  whole  German  nation,  whereupon  the  pope  ap- 
pealed to  the  etymology,  that  "benefieium"  was  but  "bonum  fac- 
tum,"  and  had  the  meanness  to  say  that  he  meant  no  more  than  to 
remind  the  emperor  of  the  "  benefits"  which  he  had  done  him,  and 
which  he  would  willingly  multiply  still  mora 


176  THE   DISTINCTION   OF   WORDS. 

gestion  that  "  humane"  is  from  the  French  feminine, 
"  hnmaine,"  and  "  human"  from  the  masculine,  can 
not  for  an  instant  be  admitted.  "  Ingenious"  is  an 
adjective  expressing  a  mental,  "ingenuous"  a  moral 
excellence.  A  gardiner  "  prunes,"  that  is,  trims  his 
trees,  birds  "  preen"  or  trim  their  feathers.  "  Bloom" 
is  a  finer  and  more  delicate  efflorescence  even  than 
"  blossom  ;"  thus,  the  "  bloom,"  but  not  the  "  blos- 
som" of  the  cheek.  A  "  curtsey"  is  one,  and  that 
merely  an  external  manifestation  of  "  courtesy." 
"  Gambling"  may  be,  as  with  a  fearful  irony  it  is 
called, play,  but  it  is  nearly  as  distant  from  "  gam- 
bolling" as  hell  is  from  heaven.  "Nor  would  it  be 
hard,  in  each  other  of  the  words  which  I  have  in- 
stanced, nor  in  others  of  like  kind  which  no  doubt 
might  be  added  to  them,  to  trace  a  distinction 
which  has  made  itself  more  or  less  strongly  felt.* 

Let  us  now  take  some  words  which  are  not  thus 
desynonymized  by  usage  only,  but  which  have  an 
inherent  etymological  distinction  —  one,  however, 
which  it  might  be  easy  to  overlook,  which,  so  long 
as  we  dwell  on  the  surface  of  the  word,  we  shall 
overlook;  and  let  us  see  whether  we  shall  not  be 

*  The  same  happens  in  other  languages.  Thus  in  Latin  "  pinna" 
and  "  penna"  are  only  different  spellings  of  the  same  word,  and  sig- 
nify alike  a  "  wing ;"  while  yet  in  practice  "  penna"  has  come  to  be 
used  for  the  wing  of  a  bird,  "  pinna"  (the  diminutive  of  which,  "  pin- 
naculum,"  has  given  us  "  pinnacle")  for  that  of  a  building.  So  is  it 
with  "codex"  and  "caudex,"  "infacetus"  and  "inficetus;"  in  the 
German  with  "rechtlich"  and  "redlich ;"  in  French  with  "harnois," 
the  armor,  or  "  harness,"  of  a  soldier,  "  harnais"  of  a  horse. 


AKROG-ANCE,    PRESUMPTION,    INSOLENCE.         l/<7 

gainers  by  bringing  out  the  distinction  into  clear 
consciousness.  Here  are  the  words  "  arrogant," 
"  presumptuous,"  and  "  insolent."  "We  often  use 
them  promiscuously;  yet  let  us  examine  them  a 
little  more  closely,  and  ask  ourselves,  as  soon  as  we 
have  succeeded  in  tracing  the  lines  of  demarcation 
between  them,  whether  we  are  not  now  in  possession 
of  three  distinct  thoughts,  instead  of  a  single  con- 
fused one.  Thus,  he  is  "  arrogant,"  who  oversteps 
the  limits  of  what  justly  is  his,  claims  the  observance 
and  homage  of  others  as  his  due  (ad  rogat),  does  not 
wait  for  them  to  offer,  but  himself  demands  it ;  or 
who,  having  right  to  one  sort  of  observance,  claims 
another  to  which  he  has  no  right.  Thus,  it  was  "  ar- 
rogance" in  Nebuchadnezzar,  when  he  required  that 
all  men  should  fall  down  before  the  image  which  he 
had  reared.  He,  a  man,  was  claiming  for  man's 
work  the  homage  which  belonged  only  to  God.  But 
one  is  "  presumptuous"  who  takes  things  to  himself 
before  he  has  acquired  any  right  and  title  to  them 
(prse  sumit),  the  young  man  who  already  takes  the 
place  of  the  old,  the  learner  who  speaks  as  with  the 
authority  of  the  teacher.  By-and-by  all  this  may 
very  justly  be  his,  but  it  is  "  presumption"  to  antici- 
pate it  now.  "Insolent"  means  properly  no  more 
than  unusual ;  to  act  "  insolently"  is  to  act  unusual- 
ly. The  offensive  sense  which  the  word  has  acquired 
rests  upon  the  feeling  that  there  is  a  certain  well- 
understood  rule  of  society,  a  recognised  standard  of 

8* 


ITS  THE   DISTINCTION   OF   WOKD8. 

moral  behavior,  to  which  each  of  its  members  should 
conform.  The  "  insolent"  man  is  one  who  violates 
this  rule,  who  breaks  through  this  order,  acting  in 
an  unaccustomed  manner.  The  same  sense  of  the 
orderly  being  also  the  moral,  speaks  out  in  the  word 
"  irregular ;"  a  man  of  "  irregular,"  is  for  us  a  man 
of  immoral  life ;  and  yet  more  strongly  in  the  Latin 
language,  whicb  has  but  one  word  (mores)  for  cus- 
toms and  morals. 

Or  consider  the  following  words  ;  "  to  hate,"  "  to 
loathe,"  "  to  detest,"  and  "  to  abhor."  Each  of  them 
rests  on  an  image  entirely  distinct  from  the  others ; 
two,  that  is  the  first  and  second,  being  Anglo-Saxon, 
and  the  others  Latin.  "  To  hate"  is  properly  to  be 
inflamed  with  passionate  dislike,  the  word  being 
connected  with  "  heat,"  "  hot ;"  just  as  we  speak, 
using  the  same  figure,  of  persons  being  "  incensed" 
with  anger,  or  of  their  anger  "  kindling  :"  "  ira"  and 
"  uro"  being  perhaps  related.  "To  loathe"  is  prop- 
erly to  feel  nausea,  the  turning  of  the  stomach  at 
that  which  excites  first  natural,  and  then  by  a  trans- 
fer, moral  disgust.  "  To  detest"  is  to  bear  witness 
against,  not  to  be  able  to  keep  silence  in  regard  of 
something,  to  feel  ourselves  obliged  to  lift  up  our 
voice  and  testimony  against  it.  "  To  abhor"  is  to 
shrink  shuddering  back,  as  one  would  from  an  object 
of  fear,  a  hissing  serpent  rising  in  one's  path.  Our 
blessed  Lord  "  hated"  to  see  his  Father's  house  pro- 
faned, when,  the  zeal  of  that  house  consuming  him, 


WHATELY'S  SYNONYMS.  179 

he  drove  forth  in  anger  the  j>rofaners  from  it :  he 
"loathed"  the  lukewarmness  of  the  Laodiceans, 
when  he  threatened  to  reject  them  out  of  his 
mouth  ;  he  "  detested"  the  hypocrisy  of  the  Phar- 
isees and  scribes,  when  he  proclaimed  their  sin 
and  uttered  those  eight  woes  against  them  (Matt. 
23).  He  "  abhorred"  the  evil  suggestions  of  Satan, 
when  he  bade  the  tempter  to  get  behind  him,  seek- 
ing to  put  a  distance  between  himself  and  him. 

You  will  observe  that  in  most  of  the  words  which 
I  have  adduced,  I  have  sought  to  refer  their  usage 
to  their  etymologies,  to  follow  the  guidance  of  these, 
and  by  the  same  aid  to  trace  the  lines  of  demarca- 
tion which  divide  them.  For  I  can  not  but  think  it 
an  omission  in  a  very  instructive  little  volume  upon 
synonyms  which  has  lately  been  edited  by  Arch- 
bishop Whately,  and  a  partial  diminution  of  its  use- 
fulness, that  in  the  valuation  of  words  reference  is  so 
seldom  made  to  these,  the  writer  relying  almost  en- 
tirely on  present  usage,  and  the  tact  and  instinct  of 
a  cultivated  mind  for  the  appreciation  of  them  aright. 
The  accomplished  author  (or  authoress)  of  this  book 
indeed  justifies  this  omission  on  the  ground  that  a 
book  of  synonyms  has  to  do  with  the  present  relative 
value  of  words,  not  with  their  roots  and  derivations ; 
and  further,  that  a  reference  to  these  brings  in  often 
what  is  only  a  disturbing  force  in  the  process,  tend- 
ing to  confuse  rather  than  to  clear.*  But  while  it  is 

*  Among  the  words  of  which  the  etymology,  if  we  were  to  suffer 


ISO  THE   DISTINCTION   OF   WORDS. 

quite  true  that  words  may  often  ride  very  slackly  at 
anchor  on  their  etymologies,  may  be  borne  hither 
and  thither  by  the  shifting  tides  and  currents  of 
usage,  yet  are  they  for  the  most  part  still  hold  en.  by 
them.  Yery  few  have  broken  away  and  drifted 
from  their  moorings  altogether.  A  "novelist,"  or 
writer  of  new.  tales  in  the  present  day  is  very  differ- 
ent from  a  "  novelist"  or  upholder  of  new  theories  in 
politics  and  religion  of  two  hundred  years  ago ;  yet 
the  idea  of  newness  is  common  to  them  both.  A 
"  naturalist"  was  then  a  denier  of  revealed  truth,  of 
any  but  natural  religion  ;  he  is  now  an  investigator 
and  often  a  pious  one  of  nature  and  of  its  laws ;  yet 
the  word  has  remained  true  to  its  etymology  all  the 

ourselves  to  be  led  by  it,  would  place  us  altogether  on  a  wrong 
track  as  to  its  present  meaning,  the  writer  adduces  "allegiance," 
which  by  usage  signifies  "the  fidelity  of  the  subject  to  his  prince," 
while  the  etymology  would  rather  suggest  "  conformity  to  law." 
But  surely  this  derivation  of  it,  as  though  it  were  "  ad  legem,"  is  an 
erroneous  one.  It  is  rather  derived  from  "  alligo,"  as  "  liege"  from 
"  ligo  ;"  and  thus  is  perfectly  true  to  its  etymology,  signifying  as  it 
does  the  obligation  wherewith  one  is  bound  to  his  superior.  Alger- 
non Sidney,  in  his  Discourse  concerning  Government,  c.  3,  §  36,  falls 
into  the  same  mistake ;  for,  replying  to  some  who  maintained  that 
submission  was  due  to  kings,  even  though  they  should  act  in  direct 
contradiction  to  the  fundamental  laws  of  the  kingdom,  he  observes 
that  the  very  word  "  allegiance,"  of  which  they  made  so  much,  re- 
futed them ;  for  this  was  plainly  "  such  an  obedience  as  the  law  re- 
quires." He  would  have  done  better  appealing,  as  indeed  on  one 
occasion  he  does  to  the  word  "  loyalty,"  which,  being  derived  from 
"  loi,"  expresses  properly  that  fidelity  which  one  owes  according  to 
law,  and  does  not  necessarily  include  that  attachment  to  the  royal 
person,  which  happily  we  in  England  have  been  able  further  to 
throw  into  the  word. 


WOEDS   TRUE   TO   THEIE   ETYMOLOGIES.  181 

while.  A  "  method ist"  was  ( once  a  follower  of  a 
certain  "  method"  of  philosophical  induction,  now 
of  a  "  method"  in  the  fulfilment  of  religious  duties  ; 
but  in  either  case  "method,"  or  orderly  progression, 
is  the  soul  of  the  word.  Take  other  words  which 
have  changed  or  modified  their  meaning  — "  planta- 
tions," for  instance,  which  were  once  colonies  of  men 
(and  indeed  we  still  "  plant"  a  colony),  but  are  now 
nurseries  of  young  trees,  and  you  will  find  the  same 
to  hold  good.  "  Ecstacy"  was  madness,  it  is  delight, 
but  in  neither  case  has  it  departed  from  its  funda- 
mental meaning,  since  it  is  the  nature  alike  of  this 
and  that  to  set  men  out  of  and  beside  themselves. 

And  even  when  the  matter  is  not  so  obvious  as  in 
these  cases,  the  etymology  of  a  word  exercises  an 
unconscious  influence  upon  its  usages,  oftentimes 
makes  itself  felt  when  least  expected,  so  that  a  word, 
after  seeming  quite  to  have  forgotten,  will,  after 
longest  wanderings,  return  to  it  again.  And  one  of 
the  arts  of  a  great  poet  or  prose-writer,  who  wishes 
to  add  emphasis  to  his  style,  to  bring  out  all  the  la- 
tent forces  of  his  native  tongue,  will  very  often  be  to 
reconnect  by  his  use  of  it,  a  word  with  its  original 
derivation,  and  not  suffer  it  to  forget  itself  though  it 
would.  How  often  Milton  does  this.*  And  even  if 

*  Yet  the  best  example  which  I  have  at  hand  is  one  from  the 
French,  from  Bossuet,  who  in  his  panegyric  of  the  great  Conde  ex- 
presses himself  thus :  "  On  le  vit  etonner  de  ses  regards  etincelants 
ceux  qui  echappaient  si  ses  coups."  Take  etonner  in  its  ordinary 
secondary  sense,  and  how  feeble  and  pointless  the  whole ;  but  doubt- 


182  THE   DISTINCTION   OF   WORDS. 

all  this  were  not  so,  yet  the  past  history  of  a  word, 
which  history  must  needs  start  from  its  derivation, 
how  soon  soever  that  may  be  left  behind,  is  surely  a 
necessary  element  in  its  present  valuation.  A  man 
may  be  wholly  different  now  from  what  once  he  was, 
yet  not  the  less  to  know  his  antecedents  is  needful, 
before  we  can  ever  perfectly  understand  his  present 
self;  and  the  same  holds  good  with  a  word. 

There  is  often  a  moral  value  in  the  possession  of 
synonyms,  enabling  us,  as  they  do,  to  say  exactly 
what  we  intend,  without  exaggeration  or  the  putting 
of  more  into  our  words  than  we  feel  in  our  hearts, 
allowing  us,  as  one  has  said,  to  be  at  once  courteous 
and  precise.  Such  moral  advantage  there  is,  for  ex- 
ample, in -the  choice  which  we  have  between  the 
words  "  to  felicitate"  and  "  to  congratulate,"  for  the 
expressing  of  our  sentiments  and  wishes  in  regard 
of  the  good  fortune  that  happens  to  others.  "  To 
felicitate"  another  is  to  wish  him  happiness,  without 
affirming  that  his  happiness  is  also  ours.  Thus  out 
of  that  general  good  will  with  which  we  ought  to  re- 
gard all,  we  might  "  felicitate"  one  almost  a  stranger 
to  us ;  nay,  more,  I  can  honestly  felicitate  one  on 
his  appointment  to  a  post,  or  attainment  of  an  honor, 
even*  though  I  may  not  consider  him  the  fittest  to 
have  obtained  it,  though  I  should  have  been  glad  if 
another  had  done  so ;  I  can  desire  and  hope,  that  is, 

less  the  orator  brought  it  back  to  the  "  attonitus"  from  which  it  and 
our  "  astonish"  alike  proceed,  and  then,  how  grand  its  employment. 


TO   INVENT,    TO   DISCOVER.  183 

that  it  may  bring  all  joj  and  happiness  to  him.  But 
I  could  not,  without  a  violation  of  truth,  "  congratu- 
late" him,  or  that  stranger  whose  prosperity  awoke 
no  lively  delight  in  my  heart ;  for  when  I  "  congrat- 
ulate" a  person  (con  gratulor\  I  declare  that  I  am 
sharer  in  his  joy,  that  what  has  rejoiced  him  has  re- 
joiced also  me.  We  have  all,  I  dare  say,  felt,  even 
without  having  made  any  such  analysis  of  the  dis- 
tinction between  the  words,  that  "  congratulate"  is  a 
far  heartier  word  than  "  felicitate,"  and  one  with 
which  it  much  better  becomes  us  to  welcome  the 
good  fortune  of  a  friend ;  and  the  analysis,  as  you 
perceive,  perfectly  justifies  the  feeling.  "Felicita- 
tions" are  little  better  than  compliments;  "congrat- 
ulations" are  the  expression  of  a  genuine  sympathy 
and  joy. 

Let  me  illustrate  the  importance  of  synonymous 
distinctions  by  another  example,  by  the  words,  "  to 
invent"  and  "  to  discover ;"  "  invention"  and  "  dis- 
covery." How  slight  may  seem  to  us  the  distinction 
between  them,  even  if  we  see  any  at  all.  Yet  try 
them  a  little  closer,  try  them,  which  is  true  proof, 
by  aid  of  examples,  and  you  will  perceive  that  by  no 
means  can  they  be  indifferently  used  —  that  on  the 
contrary  a  great  principle  lies  at  the  root  of  their 
distinction.  Thus  we  speak  of  the  "  invention15  of 
printing,  the  "  discovery"  of  America.  Shift  these 
words,  and  speak,  for  instance,  of  the  "  invention" 
of  America ;  you  feel  as  once  how  unsuitable  the 


184  THE   DISTINCTION   OF  WOBDS. 

language  is.  And  why?  Because  Columbus  did 
not  make  that  to  be  which  before  him  had  not  been. 
America  was  there,  before  he  revealed  it  to  Euro- 
pean eyes  ;  but  that  which  before  was,  he  showed  to 
be ;  he  withdrew  the  veil  which  hitherto  had  con- 
cealed it ;  he  "  discovered"  it.  So,  too,  we  speak 
of  Newton  "  discovering"  the  law  of  gravity ;  he 
drew  aside  the  veil  whereby  men's  eyes  were  hin- 
dered from  perceiving  it,  but  the  law  had  existed  from 
the  beginning  of  the  world,  and  would  have  existed 
whether  he  or  any  other  man  had  traced  it  or  no ; 
neither  was  it  in  any  way  affected  by  the  discovery 
of  it  which  he  had  made.  But  Guttemburg,  or  who- 
ever else  it  may  have  been  to  whom  the  honor  be- 
longs, "  invented"  printing ;  he  made  something  to 
be,  which  hitherto  was  not.  In  like  manner  Harvey 
"  discovered"  the  circulation  of  the  blood  ;  but  Watt 
"  invented"  the  steam-engine  ;  and  we  speak  with  a 
true  distinction  of  the  "  inventions"  of  art,  the  "  dis- 
coveries" of  science.  In  the  very  highest  matters 
of  all,  it  is  deeply  important  that  we  be  aware  of 
and  observe  the  distinction.  In  religion  there  have 
been  many  "discoveries"  but  (in  true  religion  I 
mean),  no  "inventions."  Many  discoveries — but 
God  in  each  case  is  the  discoverer ;  he  draws  away 
the  veils,  one  veil  after  another,  that  have  hidden 
him  from  men ;  the  discovery  or  revelation  is  from 
himself,  for  no  man  by  searching  has  found  out 
God  ;  and,  therefore,  wherever  anything  offers  itself 


APPREHEND,    COMPREHEND.  ]  !$5 

as  an  "  invention"  in  matters  of  religion,  it  proclaims 
itself  a  lie  —  all  self-devised  Worships,  all  religions 
which  man  pi'ojects  from  his  own  heart.  Just  that 
is  known  of  God  which  he  is  pleased  to  make  known, 
and  no  more ;  and  men's  recognising  or  refusing  to 
recognise  in  nowise  aifects  it.  They  may  deny  or 
own  him,  but  he  continues  the  same. 

As  involving  in  like  manner  a  distinction  which 
can  not  safely  be  lost  sight  of,  how  important  is  it  to 
keep  in  mind  the  difference,  of  which  the  existence 
is  asserted  by  the  fact  that  we  possess  the  two  words, 
"  to  apprehend"  and  "  to  comprehend,"  with  their 
substantives,  "apprehension"  and  "comprehension." 
For  indeed  we  "  apprehend"  many  truths,  which  we 
do  not  "  comprehend."  The  great  mysteries  of  our 
faith,  the  doctrine  for  instance  of  the  Holy  Trinity 
—  we  lay  hold  upon  it  (ad  prehendo),  we  hang  on  it, 
our  souls  live  by  it;  but  we  do  not  "comprehend" 
it,  that  is,  we  do  not  take  it  all  in  ;  for  it  is  a  neces- 
sary attribute  of  God  that  he  is  incomprehensible ; 
if  he  were  not  so,  he  would  not  be  God,  or  the  be- 
ing that  comprehended  him  would  be  God  also. 
But  it  also  belongs  to  the  idea  of  God  that  he  may 
be  "apprehended,"  though  not  "comprehended," 
by  his  reasonable  creatures ;  he  has  made  them  to 
know  him,  though  not  to  know  him  all,  to  "  appre- 
hend," though  not  to  "  comprehend"  him.  "We 
may  transfer  with  profit  the  same  distinction  to  mat- 
ters not  quite  so  solemn.  I  read  Goldsmith's  Trow- 


186  THE   DISTINCTION   OF   WORDS. 

eller,  or  one  of  Gay's  fables,  and  I  feel  that  I  "  com- 
prehend" it.  I  do  not  believe,  that  is,  that  there 
was  anything  in  the  poet's  mind  or  intention,  which 
I  have  not  in  the  reading  reproduced  in  my  own. 
But  I  read  Hamlet,  or  King  Lear :  here  I  "  .appre- 
hend" much ;  I  have  wondrous  glimpses  of  the  poet's 
intention  and  aim  ;  but  I  do  not  for  an  instant  sup- 
pose that  I  have  "  comprehended,"  taken  in,  that  is, 
all  that  was  in  his  mind  in  the  writing ;  or  that  his 
purpose  does  not  stretch  in  manifold  directions  far 
beyond  the  range  of  my  vision ;  and  I  am  sure  there 
are  few  who  would  not  shrink  from  affirming,  at 
least  if  they  at  all  realized  the  force  of  the  words 
they  were  using,  that  they  "  comprehended"  Shak- 
spere ;  however  much  they  may  "  apprehend"  in 
him. 

How  often  "  opposite"  and  "  contrary"  are  used 
as  if  there  was  no  difference  between  them,  and  yet 
there  is  a  most  essential  one,  one  which  perhaps  we 
may  best  express  by  saying  that  "  opposites"  com- 
plete, while  "  contraries"  exclude  one  another.  Thus 
the  most  "  opposite"  moral  or  mental  characteristics 
may  meet  in  one  and  the  same  person,  while  to  say 
that  the  most  "  contrary"  did  so,  would  be  mani- 
festly absurd ;  for  example,  a  man  may  be  at  once 
prudent  and  bold,  for  these  are  opposites ;  he  could 
not  be  at  once  prudent  and  rash,  for  these  are  con- 
traries. "We  may  love  and  fear  at  the  same  time 
and  the  same  person ;  we  pray  in  the  litany  that  we 


v  OPPOSITE,   CONTRARY.  187 

may  love  and  fear  God,  the  two  being  opposites  and 
thus  the  complements  of  one  another;  but  to  pray 
that  we  might  love  and  hate  would  be  as  absurd  as 
it  would  be  impious,  for  these  are  contraries,  and 
could  no  more  co-exist  together  than  white  and  black, 
hot  and  cold,  at  the  same  time  in  the  same  subject; 
or,  to  take  another  illustration,  sweet  and  sour  are 
"  opposites,"  sweet  and  bitter  are  "  contraries."*  It 
will  be  seen  then  that  there  is  always  a  certain  rela- 
tion between  opposites ;  they  unfold  themselves 
though  in  different  directions  from  the  same  root, 
as  the  positive  and  negative  forces  of  electricity,  and 
in  their  very  opposition  uphold  and  sustain  one  an- 
other ;  while  contraries  encounter  one  another  from 
quarters  diverse,  and  one  only  subsists  in  the  exact 
degree  that  it  puts  out  of  working  the  other.  Surely 
this  distinction  can  not  be  an  unimportant  one  either 
in  the  region  of  ethics  or  elsewhere. 

It  will  happen  continually  that  rightly  to  distin- 
guish between  two  words  will  throw  great  light  upon 
some  controversy  in  which  those  words  play  a  prin- 
cipal part,  nay,  will  virtually  put  an  end  to  that  con- 
troversy altogether.  Thus  when  Hobbes,  with  a  true 
instinct,  would  have  laid  deep  the  foundations  of 
atheism  and  despotism  together,  resolving  all  right 
into  might,  and  taking  away  from  men,  if  he  could, 
not  merely  the  power,  but  denying  to  them  the  duty 
of  obeying  God  rather  than  man,  his  moral  sophisms 
*  See  Coleridge's  Church  and  State,  p.  18. 


188  THE  DISTINCTION   OF  WORDS. 

could  stand  only  so  long  as  it  was  not  perceived  that 
"  compulsion"  and  "  obligation,"  with  which  he  jug- 
gled, conveyed  two  ideas  perfectly  distinct,  indeed 
disparate,  in  kind,  and  that  what  pertained  to  one  had 
been  transferred  to  the  other  by  a  mere  confusion  of 
terms  and  cunning  sleight  of  hand,  the  one  being  a 
physical,  the  other  a  moral  necessity.  There  is  in- 
deed no  such  fruitful  source  of  confusion  and  mis- 
chief as  this — to  words  are  tacitly  assumed  as  equiv- 
alent, and  therefore  exchangeable,  and  then  that 
which  may  be  assumed,  and  with  truth,  of  one,  is 
assumed  also  of  the  other,  of  which  it  is  not  true. 
Thus,  for  instance,  it  often  is  with  "  instruction"  and 
"  education."  Can  not  we  "  instruct"  a  child,  it  is 
asked,  can  not  we  teach  it  geography,  or  arithmetic, 
or  grammar,  quite  independently  of  the  catechism, 
or  even  of  the  Scriptures  ?  No  doubt  you  may,  bnt 
can  you  "educate,"  without  bringing  moral  and 
spiritual  forces  to  bear  upon  the  mind  and  affections 
of  the  child?  And  you  must  not  be  permitted  to 
transfer  the  admissions  which  we  freely  make  in  re- 
gard of  "  instruction,"  as  though  they  also  held  good 
in  respect  of  "  education."  For  what  is  "  educa- 
tion"? Is  it  a  furnishing  of  a  man  from  without 
with  knowledge  and  facts  and  information  ?  or  is  it 
a  drawing  forth  from  within  and  a  training  of  the 
spirit,  of  the  true  humanity  which  is  latent  within 
him  ?  Is  the  process  of  education  the  filling  of  the 
child's  mind,  as  a  cistern  is  filled  with  waters  brought 


INSTRUCTION,    EDUCATION.  139 

in  buckets  from  some  other  source,  or  the  opening 
up  of  its  own  fountains  ?  Now  if  we  give  any  heed 
to  the  word  "education,"  and  to  the  voice  which 
speaks  in  the  word,  we  shall  not  long  be  in  doubt. 
Education  must  educe,  being  from  "  educare,"  which 
is  but  another  form  of  "  educere ;"  and  that  is  "  to 
draw  out,"  and  not  "  to  put  in."  "  To  draw  out" 
what  is  in  the  child,  the  immortal  spirit  which  is 
there,  this  is  the  end  of  education  ;  and  so  much  the 
word  declares.  The  putting  in  is  indeed  most  need- 
ful, that  is,  the  child  must  be  instructed  as  well  as 
educated,  and  the  word  "instruction"  just  means 
furnishing;  but  not  instructed  instead  of  educated. 
He  must  first  have  powers  awakened  in  him,  meas- 
ures of  spiritual  value  given  him ;  and  then  he  will 
know  how  to  deal  with  the  facts  of  this  outward 
world  ;  then  instruction  in  these  will  profit  him  \  but 
not  without  the  higher  training,  still  less  as  a  substi- 
tute for  it. 

It  has  occasionally  happened  that  the  question  of 
which  out  of  two  apparent  synonyms  should  be 
adopted  in  some  important  state  document  has  been 
debated  with  no  little  earnestness  and  vigor.  Thus 
was  it,  for  example,  at  the  great  English  revolution 
of  1688,  when  the  two  houses  of  parliament  were  for 
a  considerable  time  at  issue  whether  it  should  be  de- 
clared of  James  the  Second,  that  he  had  "  abdicated," 
or  "  deserted,"  the  throne.  This  might  seem  at  first 
sight  a  mere  strife  about  words,  and  yet,  in  reality, 


190  THE   DISTINCTION   OF   WOEDS. 

serious  constitutional  questions  were  involved  in  the 
selection  of  the  one  word  or  the  other.  The  commons 
insisted  on  the  word  "abdicated,"  not  as  wishing  to 
imply  that  in  any  act  of  the  late  king  there  had  been 
an  official  renunciation  of  the  crown,  which  would 
have  been  manifestly  untrue;  but  because  "abdica- 
ted" to  their  minds  alone  expressed  the  fact  that 
James  had  so  borne  himself  as  virtually  to  have  en- 
tirely renounced,  disowned,  and  relinquished  the 
crown,  to  have  irrevocably  forfeited  and  separated 
himself  from  it,  and  from  any  right  to  it  for  ever ; 
while  "  deserted"  would  have  seemed  to  leave  room 
and  an  opening  for  a  return,  which  they  were  deter- 
mined to  declare  for  ever  excluded  ;  as,  were  it  said 
of  a  husband  that  Jie  had  "  deserted"  his  wife,  or  of 
a  soldier  that  he  had  "  deserted"  his  colors,  this  lan- 
guage would  iniply  not  only  that  he  might,  but  that 
he  ought  and  was  bound  to  return.  Lord  Somers' 
speech  on  the  occasion  is  a  masterly  specimen  of 
synonymous  discrimination,  and  an  evidence  of  the 
uses  in  highest  matters  of  state  to  which  it  may  be 
turned. 

Let  me  press  upon  you  in  conclusion  some  few  of 
the  many  advantages  to  be  derived  from  the  habit 
of  distinguishing  synonyms.  These  advantages  we 
might  presume  to  be  many,  even  though  we  could 
not  ourselves  perceive  them ;  for  how  often  do  the 
great  masters  of  style  in  every  tongue,  perhaps  none 


DISTINGUISHING   SYNONYMS.  191 

so  often  as  Cicero,  the  greatest  of  all,*  pause  to  dis- 
criminate between  the  words  they  are  using;  how 
much  care  and  labor,  how  much  ^ubtlety  of  thought, 
they  have  counted  well  bestowed  on  the  operation  ; 
how  much  importance  do  they  avowedly  attach  to  it ; 
not  to  say  that  their  works,  even  where  they  do  not 
intend  it,  will  be  a  continual  lesson  in  this  respect 
a  great  writer  merely  in  the  accuracy  with  which  he 
employs  words  will  always  be  exercising  us  in  synon 
ymous  discrimination.  But  the  advantages  of  at 
tending  to  them  need  not  be  taken  OB  trust;  they 
are  evident.  How  great  a  part  of  true  wisdom  it  is 
to  be  able  to  distinguish  between  things  that  differ, 
things  seemingly,  but  not  really  alike,  this  is  re- 
markably attested  by  our  words  " discernment"  and 
"  discretion ;"  which  are  now  used  as  equivalent,  the 
first  to  "  insight,"  the  second  to  "  prudence  ;"  while 
yet  in  their  earlier  usage,  and  according  to  their 
etymology,  being  both  from  "  discerno,"  they  signify 

*  Thus  he  distinguishes  between  voluntas  and  cupiditas ;  cautio 
and  metus  (Tusc.  4,  6) ;  gaudium,  laetitia,  voluptas  ( Tusc.  4,  6 ;  Fin. 
2,  4) ;  caritns  and  amor  (De  Part.  Or.  25) ;  ebrius  and  ebriosus,  ira- 
cundus  and  iratus,  anxietas  and  angor  (Tusc.  4,  12);  vitium,  morbus, 
segrotatio  (Tusc.  4,  13);  labor  and  dolor  (Tusc.  2,  15);  raalitia  and 
vitiositas  (Tusc.  4,  15) ;  Quintilian  also  often  bestows  attention  on 
synonyms,  observing  well  (vi.  3,  17):  "  Pluribus  nominibus  in  eadera 
re  vulgo  utimur;  quae  tamen  si  diducas,  suam  quandam  propriam 
yim  ostendent :"  and  among  church  writers,  Augustine  is  a  frequent 
and  mostly  a  successful  discriminator  of  words.  Thus  he  separates 
off  from  one  another  flagitium  and  facinus  (De  Doct.  Christ.  3,  10); 
semulatio  and  invidia  (Exp.  ad  Gal.  v.  20);  arrha  and  pignus  (Serm, 
23,  8,  9) ;  with  many  more. 


192  THE   DISTINCTION   OF   WOKD8. 

the  power  of  so  seeing  things  that  in  the  seeing  we 
distinguish  and  separate  them  one  from  another. 
Such  were  originally  "  discernment"  and  "  discre- 
tion," and  such  in  great  measure  they  are  still.  And 
in  words  is  a  material  ever  at  hand  on  which  to  train 
the  spirit  to  a  skilfulness  in  this ;  on  which  to  exer- 
cise its  sagacity  through  the  habit  of  distinguishing 
there  where  it  would  be  so  easy  to  confound.  Nor  is 
this  habit  of  discrimination  only  valuable  as  a  part 
of  our  intellectual  training ;  but  what  a  positive  in- 
crease is  it  of  mental  wealth  when  we  have  learned 
to  discern  between  things,  which  really  differ,  but 
have  been  hitherto  confused  in  our  minds  ;  and  have 
made  these  distinctions  permanently  our  own  in  the 
only  way  by  which  they  can  be  made  secure,  that  is, 
by  assigning  to  each  its  appropriate  word  and  pecu- 
liar sign. 

What  a  help  moreover  will  it  prove  to  the  writing 
of  a  good  English  style,  if  instead  of  having  many 
words  before  us,  and  choosing  almost  at  random  and 
at  hap-hazard  from  among  them,  we  at  once  know 
which,  and  which  only,  we  ought  in  the  case  before 
us  to  employ,  which  will  be  the  exact  vesture  of  our 
thoughts.  It  is  the  first  characteristic  of  a  well-dressed 
man  that  his  clothes  fit  him  :  they  are  not  too  small 
and  shrunken  here,  too  large  and  loose  there.  Now 
it  is  precisely  such  a  prime  characteristic  of  a  good 
style  that  the  words  fit  close  to  the  thoughts :  they 
will  not  be  too  big  here,  hanging  like  a  giant's  robe 


APPROPRIATE   USE   OF   WOKDS.  193 

on  the  limbs  of  a  dwarf;  nor  too  small  there,  as  a 
boy's  garments  into  which  the  man  has  with  difficulty 
and  ridiculously  thrust  himself.  You  do  not  feel  in 
one  place  that  the  writer  means  more  than  he  has 
succeeded  in  saying ;  in  another  that  he  has  said 
more  than  he  means  ;  or  in  a  third  something  beside 
what  his  intention  was :  and  all  this,  from  a  lack  of 
dexterity  in  employing  the  instrument  of  language, 
of  precision  in  knowing  what  words  would  be  the 
exactest  correspondents  and  fittest  exponents  of  his 
thought. 

Now  let  us  suppose  this  power  of  exactly  saying 
what  we  mean,  and  neither  more  nor  less  than  we 
mean,  to  be  merely  an  elegant  mental  accomplish- 
ment. It  is  indeed  this,  and  perhaps  there  is  no 
power  so  surely  indicative  of  a  high  and  accurate 
training  of  the  intellectual  faculties.  But  it  is  also 
much  more  than  this  :  it  has  a  moral  meaning  as  well. 
It  is  nearly  allied  to  morality,  inasmuch  as  it  is  near- 
ly connected  with  truthfulness.  Every  man  who  has 
himself  in  any  degree  cared  for  the  truth,  and  occu- 
pied himself  in  seeking  it,  is  more  or  less  aware  how 
much  of  the  falsehood  in  the  world  passes  current 
under  the  concealment  of  words,  how  many  strifes 
and  controversies, 

"  Which  feed  the  simple,  and  offend  the  wise," 
find  all  or  nearly  all  their  fuel  and  their  nourishment 
in  words  carelessly  or  dishonestly  employed.     And 

when  a  man  has  had  any  actual  experience  of  this 

9 


THE   DISTINCTION    OF   WORDS. 

fact,  and  has  at  all  perceived  how  far  this  mischief 
reaches,  he  is'  sometimes  almost  tempted  to  say  with 
Shakspere's  clown,  ""Words  are  grown  so  false,  I  am 
loath  to  prove  reason  with  them."  He  can  not,  how- 
ever, forego  their  employment,  not  to  say  that  he  will 
presently  perceive  that  this  falseness  of  theirs  where- 
of he  accuses  them,  this  cheating  power  of  words,  is 
not  of  'their  proper  use,  but  their  abuse  ;  that  how- 
ever they  may  have  been  enlisted  in  the  service  of 
lies,  they  are  yet  of  themselves  most  true,  and  that 
where  the  bane  is,  there  the  antidote  should  be  sought 
as  well.  Ask  then  words  what  they  mean,  that  you 
may  deliver  yourselves,  that  you  may  help  to  deliver 
others  from  the  tyranny  of  words,  and  from  the  strife 
of  "  word-warriors."  Learn  to  distinguish  between 
them,  for  you  have  the  authority  of  Hooker,  that  "  the 
mixture  of  those  things  by  speech,  which  by  nature 
are  divided,  is  the  mother  of  all  error."  And  although 
I  can  not  promise  you  that  the  study  of  synonyms, 
or  the  acquaintance  with  derivations,  or  any  other 
knowledge  but  the  very  highest  knowledge  of  all, 
will  deliver  you  from  the  temptation  to  misuse  this 
or  any  other  gift  of  God  —  a  temptation  which  al- 
ways lies  so  near  us  —  yet  I  am  sure  that  these  studies 
rightly  pursued  will  do  much  in  leading  us  to  stand 
in  awe  of  this  divine  gift  of  words,  and  to  tremble 
at  the  thought  of  turning  it  to  any  other  than  those 
worthy  ends  for  which  God  has  endowed  us  with  it. 


LECTURE   VI. 

THE  SCHOOLMASTER'S  USE  OF  WORDS. 

I  SHALL  now  attempt  to  apply,  and  to  suggest  some 
ways  in  which,  you  may  apply,  what  has  been  hith- 
erto spoken  to  practical  ends,  and  make  this  study 
of  words,  which  I  have  been  pressing  upon  you,  to 
tell  upon  your  own  teaching  hereafter;  for  assur- 
edly we  ought  never  to  disconnect  what  we  ourselves 
may  learn,  from  the  hope  and  expectation  of  being 
able  by  its  aid  to  teach  others  more  effectually ;  our 
studies,  when  we  do  so,  become  instantly  a  selfish 
thing.  There  is  a  noble  line  in  Chaucer,  where,  char- 
acterizing the  true  scholar,  he  says  of  him, 

"  And  gladly  would  he  learn,  and  gladly  teach," 

and  in  the  spirit  of  this  line  I  trust  that  we  shall  each 
one  of  us  work  and  live. 

But  to  address  ourselves  to  the  matter  more  directly 
in  hand.  You  all  here  are  made  acquainted  with  a 
good  deal  more  than  the  first  rudiments  of  the  Latin 
tongue.  Every  one  who  can  at  all  appreciate  what 
your  future  task  will  be,  must  rejoice  that  it  is  so. 
Indeed,  it  is  hard  to  understand  how  you  could  be 
otherwise  fitted  and  accomplished  for  the  work  which 


196        THE  SCHOOLMASTER'S  USE  OF  WOEDS. 

yqu  have  before  you.  It  is  conceivable  in  languages 
like  the  Greek  and  the  German,  which,  for  all  prac- 
tical purposes,  may  be  considered  rounded  and  com- 
plete in  themselves,  which  contain  all  the  resources 
for  discovering  the  origin  and  meaning  of  their  words 
in  their  own  bosom,  or  so  nearly  so,  that  the  few  ex- 
ceptions need  not  be  taken  into  account,  in  such  lan- 
guages, I  say,  it  is  conceivable  that  a  thorough  knowl- 
edge of  his  own  tongue  may  be  attained  by  one  who 
remains  ignorant  of  any  other,  and  that  himself  pos- 
sessing, he  may  be  able  to  impart  this  same  knowl- 
edge to  others.  In  fact,  the  Greek,  who  certainly 
understood  his  own  language  thoroughly,  never  did 
extend  his  knowledge  beyond  it.  But  it  is  different 
with  English.  "Would  we  follow  up  its  words,  not  to 
their  remotest  sources,  but  only  a  step  or  two,  it  car- 
ries us  at  once  beyond  itself  and  to  a  foreign  soil,  and 
mainly  to  the  Latin.  This  being- the  case,  he  who  has 
not  some  acquaintance  with  Latin  can  only  explain  a 
vast  number  of  words  loosely  and  at  hazard ;  he  has 
some  general  sense  or  impression  of  what  they  intend, 
of  the  ideas  which  they  represent,  but  nothing  cer- 
tain. He  stands  on  no  solid  ground ;  he  does  not 
feel  able  to  plant  himself  securely  as  at  a  middle 
point,  from  which,  as  from  a  common  centre,  all  its 
different  meanings  diverge. 

And  having  these  convictions  in  regard  of  the  ad- 
vantage of  following  up  words  to  their  sources  of 
"  deriving"  them,  that  is,  of  tracing  each  little  rill  to 


PHONETIC   SPELLING.  197 

the  river  from  which  it  first  was  drawn,  let  me  here 
observe,  as  something  not  remote  from -our  subject, 
but,  on  the  contrary,  directly  bearing  upon  it,  that  I 
can  conceive  no  method  of  so  effectually  defacing 
and  barbarizing  our  English  tongue,  no  scheme  that 
would  go  so  far  to  empty  it,  practically  at  least  and 
for  us,  of  all  the  hoarded  wit,  wisdom,  imagination, 
and  history  which  it  contains,  to  cut  the  vital  nerve 
which  connects  its  present  with  the  past,  as  the  in- 
troduction of  the  scheme  of  "phonetic  spelling," 
which  some  have  lately  been  zealously  advocating 
among  us ;  the  principle  of  which  is  that  all  words 
should  be  spelt  according  as  they  are  sounded,  that 
the  writing  should  be,  in  every  case,  subordinated  to 
the  speaking. 

The  tacit  assumption  that  it  ought  so  to  be  is  the 
pervading  error  running  through  the  whole  system. 
But  there  is  no  necessity  that  it  should  ;  every  word 
on  the  contrary  has  two  existences,  as  a  spoken  word 
and  a  written ;  and  you  have  no  right  to  sacrifice  one 
of  these,  or  even  to  subordinate  it  wholly,  to  the  oth- 
er. A  word  exists  as  truly  for  the  eye  as  for  the  ear, 
and  in  a  highly  advanced  state  of  society,  where 
reading  is  almost  as  universal  as  speaking,  as  much 
perhaps  for  the  first  as  for  the  last.  That  in  the 
written  word  moreover  is  the  permanence  and  con- 
tinuity of  language  and  of  learning,  and  that  the 
connection  is  most  intimate  of  a  true  orthography  with 
all  this,  is  affirmed  in  our  words  "  letters,"  "  litera- 


198        THE  SCHOOLMASTER'S  USE  OF  WOEDS. 

ture,"  "  unlettered,"  even  as  in  other  languages  by 
words  entirely  corresponding  to  these.* 

The  gains  consequent  on  the  introduction  of  such 
a  change  as  is  proposed  would  be  insignificantly 
small,  while  the  losses  would  be  enormously  great. 
The  gains  would  be  the  saving  of  a  certain  amount 
of  labor  in  the  learning  to  spell ;  an  amount  of  labor, 
however,  absurdly  exaggerated  by  the  promoters  of 
the  scheme.  This  labor,  whatever  it  is,  would  be  in 
great  part  saved,  as  the  pronunciation  would  at  once 
put  in  possession  of  the  spelling;  if,  indeed,  spelling 
or  orthography  could  then  be  said  to  exist.  But  even 
this  insignificant  gain  would  not  long  remain,  seeing 
that  pronunciation  is  itself  continually  altering;  cus- 
tom is  lord  here,  for  better  or  for  worse ;  and  a  multi- 
tude of  words  are  now  pronounced  in  a  different 
manner  from  that  of  a  hundred  years  ago,  so  that, 
ere  very  long,  there  would  again  be  a  chasm  between 
the  spelling  and  pronunciation  of  words ;  —  unless 
indeed  the  former  were  to  vary,  as  I  do  not  see  well 
how  it  could  consistently  refuse  to  do  with  each  vari- 
ation of  the  latter,  reproducing  each  one  of  its  bar- 
barous or  capricious  alterations ;  which  thus  it  must 
be  remembered,  would  be  changes  not  in  the  pro- 
nunciation only,  but  in  the  word  itself,  for  the  word 
would  only  exist  as  a  pronounced  word,  the  written 
being  a  mere  shadow  of  this.  When  these  had  mul- 
tiplied a  little,  and  they  would  indeed  multiply  ex- 


THE  ANCESTRY  OF  WORDS.          199 

ceedingly,  so  soon  as  the  barrier  against  them  which 
now  exists  was  removed,  what  the  language  would 
ere  long  become,  it  is  not  easy  to  guess.  • 

This  fact,  however,  though  alone  sufficient  to  show 
how  little  the  scheme  of  phonetic  spelling  would  re- 
move even  those  inconveniences  which  it  proposes  to 
remedy,  is  only  the  smallest  objection  to  it.  The  far 
deeper  and  more  serious  one  is,  that  in  innumerable 
instances,  it  would  obliterate  altogether  those  clear 
marks  of  birth  and  parentage,  which,  if  not  all,  yet 
so  many  of  our  words  bear  now  upon  their  very  fronts, 
or  are  ready,  upon  a  very  slight  interrogation,  to 
declare  to  us.  Words  have  now  an  ancestry ;  and 
the  ancestry  of  words  as  of  men  is  often  a  very  noble 
part  of  them,  making  them  capable  .of  great  things, 
because  those  from  whom  they  are  descended  have 
done  great  things  before  them  ;  but  this  would  deface 
their  scutcheon,  and  bring  them  all  to  the  same  ig- 
noble level.  Words  are  now  a  nation,  grouped  into 
tribes  and  families,  some  smaller,  some  larger;  this 
change  would  go  far  to  reduce  them  to  a  promiscu- 
ous and  barbarous  horde.  Now  they  are  often  trans- 
lucent with  their  idea,  as  an  alabaster  vase  is  lighted 
up  by  a  lamp  placed  within  it;  in  how  many  cases 
would  this  inner  light  be  then  quenched.  They  have 
now  a  body  and  a  soul,  and  the  soul  looking  through 
the  b6dy;  oftentimes  then  nothing  but  the  body,  not 
seldom  nothing  but  the  carcase,  of  the  word  would 
remain.  Both  these  objections  were  urged  long  ago 


200        THE  SCHOOLMASTER'S  USE  OF 

by  Bacon,  who  characterizes  this  so-called  reforma- 
tion, "  that  writing  should  be  consonant  to  speaking," 
as  "  a  branch  of  unprofitable  subtlety ;"  and  espe- 
cially urges  that  thereby  "  the  derivations  of  words, 
especially  from  foreign  languages  are  utterly  de- 
faced and  extinguished." 

From  the  results  of  various  approximations  to  pho- 
netic spelling,  which  from  time  to  time  have  been 
made,  and  the  losses  which  have  thereon  ensued,  we 
may  guess  what  the  loss  would  be  were  the  system 
fully  carried  out.  When  "  fancy"  was  spelt  "  phant- 
sy,"  as  by  Sylvester  in  his  translation  of  Du  Bartas, 
and  by  the  other  scholar! ike  writers  of  that  time,  no 
one  could  then  doubt  of  its  connection,  or  rather  its 
original  identity,  with  "phantasy,"  as  no  Greek 
scholar  could  miss  its  relation  with  ^avraaia.  Of  those 
sufficiently  acquainted  with  Latin,  it  would  be  curi- 
ous to  know  how  many  have  seen  "  silva"  in  "  sav- 
age," since  it  has  been  so  written,  and  not  "  salvage," 
as  of  old  ?  or  have  been  reminded  of  the  hinderances 
to  a  civilized  state  of  existence  which  the  indomitable 
forest,  more  perhaps  than  any  other  obstacle,  pre- 
sents. Spell  "  analyse"  as  I  have  sometimes  seen  it, 
and  as  phonetically  it  ought  to  be,  "  analize,"  and 
the  tap-root  of  the  word  is  cut.  What  number  of 
readers  will  recognise  in  it  then  the  image  of  dissolv- 
ing and  resolving  aught  into  its  elements,  and  use  it 
with  a  more  or  less  conscious  reference  to  this  ?  It 
may  be  urged  that  few  do  so  even  now  among  those 


THE   RELATIONSHIP   OF   WORDS.  201 

who  employ  the  word.  The  more  need  they  should 
not  be  fewer ;  for  these  few  do  in  fact  retain  the  word 
in  its  place,  prevent  it  from  gradually  drifting  from 
it,  preserve  its  vitality  not  merely  for  themselves,  but 
also  for  the  others  that  have  not  this  knowledge.  In 
phonetic  spelling  is  in  fact  the  proposal  that  the  edu- 
cated should  voluntarily  place  themselves  in  the  con- 
ditions and  under  the  disadvantages  of  the  ignorant 
and  uneducated,  instead  of  seeking  to  elevate  these 
last  to  theirs.* 

Even  now  the  relationship  of  words,  which  are  so 
important  for  our  right  understanding  of  them,  are 
continually  overlooked ;  a  very  little  thing  serving  to 
conceal  them  from  us.  For  example,  what  a  multi- 
tude of  our  nouns  substantive  and  adjective  are,  in 
fact,  unsuspected  participles,  or  are  otherwise  most 

*  The  same  attempt  to  introduce  phonetic  spelling,  or  "  phonogra- 
phy" as  it  is  there  called,  has  been  several  times  made,  once  in  the 
sixteenth  century,  and  again  some  twenty  years  ago,  in  France.  Let 
us  see  by  one  or  two  examples  what  would  be  the  results  there. 
Here  is  the  word  "temps;"  from  which  the  phronographists  omit  the 
p  as  superfluous.  WTiat  is  the  consequence  ?  at  once  its  visible  con- 
nection with  the  Latin  "  tempus,"  with  the  Spanish  "  tiempo,"  with 
the  Italian  "  tempo,"  with  its  own  "  temporel"  and  "  temporaire,"  is 
broken,  and  for  many  effaced.  Or  again,  here  are  "  poids"  a  weight, 
"poix"  pitch,  ''pois"  peas.  I  do  not  suppose  the  Frenchman  who 
spoke  his  own  language  the  best,  could  mark  in  pronunciation  the 
distinction  between  these ;  and  thus  to  the  ear  there  may  be  confu- 
sion between  them,  but  to  the  eye  there  is  none ;  not  to  say  that  the 
d  in  "  poids"  puts  it  for  us  at  once  in  relation  with  "  pondus,"  the  x 
in  "  poix"  with  "  pix,"  the  s  in  "  pois"  with  the  low  Latin  "  pisum." 
In  each  case  the  letter  which  these  improvers  of  orthography  would 
dismiss  as  useless  and  worse  than  useless,  contains  the  secret  of  the 
word. 

9* 


202        THE  SCHOOLMASTER'S  USE  or  WORDS. 

closely  connected  with  verbs,  with  which,  notwith- 
standing, until  some  one  points  out  the  fact  to  us,  we 
probably  never  think  of  putting  them  in  any  relation. 
And  yet  with  how  lively  an  interest  shall  we  discover 
words  to  be  of  closest  kin,  which  we  had  never  consid- 
ered till  now,  but  as  entire  strangers  to  one  another ; 
what  a  real  increase  will  it  be  in  our  acquaintance 
with,  and  mastery  of,  English  to  become  aware  of 
such  relationship.  Thus  "  heaven"  is  only  the  perfect 
of"  to  heave ;"  and  is  so  called  because  it  is  "  heaved" 
or  "  heaven"  up,  being  properly  the  sky  as  it  is  raised 
aloft;  the  "smith"  has  his  name  from  the  sturdy 
blows  that  he  "  smites"  upon  the  anvil ;  "  wrong"  is 
the  perfect  participle  of  "  to  wring,"  that  which  one 
has  "  wrung"  or  wrested  from  the  right ;  just  as  in 
French  "  tort,"  from  "  torqueo,"  is  that  which  is 
twisted  ;  "  guilt"  of  "  to  guile"  or  "  beguile  ;"  to  find 
"  guilt"  in  a  man  is  to  find  that  he  has  been  "  be- 
guiled," that  is  by  the  devil,  "instigante  diabolo," 
as  it  is  inserted  in  all  indictments  for  murder,  the 
forms  of  which  come  down  to  us  from  a  time  when 
men  were  not  ashamed  of  tracing  evil  to  his  inspira- 
tion. The  "  brunt"  of  the  battle  is  the  "  heat"  of  the 
battle,  where  it  "  burns"  the  most  fiercely.  "  Haft," 
as  of  a  knife,  is  properly  only  the  participle  perfect 
of  "  to  have,"  that  whereby  you  "  have"  or  hold  it. 
Or  take  two  or  three  nouns  adjective ;  "  strong"  is 
the  participle  past  of  "  to  string ;"  a  "  strong"  man 
means  no  more  than  one  whose  sinews  are  firmly 


COMMON   PARENTAGE   OF   MANY    WORDS.          203 

"strung."  The  " left"  hand,  as  distinguished  from 
the  right,  is  the  hand  which'  we  "  leave ;"  inasmuch 
as  for  twenty  times  we  use  the  right  hand,  we  do  not 
once  employ  it ;  and  it  obtains  its  name  from  being 
"  left"  unused  so  often.  "  Odd"  is,  I  believe,  prop- 
erly "  owed  ;"  an  "  odd"  glove,  or  an  "  odd"  shoe  is 
one  that  is  "  owed"  to  another,  or  to  which  another 
is  "owed,"  for  the  making  of  a  pair — just  as  we 
speak  of  a  man  being  "  singular,"  wanting,  that  is, 
his  match.  ""Wild"  is  the  participle  past  of  "to 
will ;"  a  "  wild"  horse  is  a  "  willed"  or  self-willed 
horse,  one  that  has  been  never  tamed  or  taught  to 
submit  its  will  to  the  will  of  another ;  and  so  with  a 
man. 

This  exercise  of  putting  words  in  their  true  relation 
and  connection  with  one  another  might  be  carried 
much  further.  We  might  take  whole  groups  of 
words,  which  seem  to  us  at  first  sight  to  acknowledge 
hardly  any  kinship,  if  indeed  an}T,  with  one  another, 
and  yet  with,  no  great  difficulty  show  that  they  had 
a  common  parentage  and  descent.  For  instance, 
here  are  "  shire,"  "  shore,"  "  share,"  "  sheers ;" 
"shred,"  "sherd;"  they  all  are  derived  from  one 
Anglo-Saxon  word,  which  signifies  to  separate  or  di- 
vide, and  still  exists  with  us  in  the  shape  of  "to 
sheer,"  which  made  once  the  three  perfects,  "  shore," 
"  share,"  "  shered."  "  Shire"  is  a  district  in  England , 
as  it  is  separated  from  the  rest ;  a  "  share"  is  a  por- 
tion of  anything  thus  divided  off;  "sheers"  are  in- 


204        THE  SCHOOLMASTER'S    USE  OF  WORDS. 

struments  effecting  this  process  of  separation ;  the 
"  shore"  is  the  place  where  the  continuity  of  the  land 
is  interrupted  or  separated  by  the  sea ;  a  "  shred"  is 
that  which  is  "  shered"  or  shorn  from  the  main  piece ; 
a  ""sherd"  as  a  pot-"  sherd"  that  which  is  broken  off 
and  thus  divided  from  the  vessel ;  and  these  which 
I  have  adduced  by  no  means  exhaust  this  group  or 
family  of  words,  though  it  would  take  more  time 
than  I  can  spare  to  put  some  other  words  in  relation 
with  it. 

But  this  analyzing  of  groups  of  words  for  the  de- 
tecting of  the  bond  of  relationship  between  them,  and 
the  one  root  out  of  which  they  all  grow,  is  a  process 
which  may  require  more  etymological  knowledge 
than  you  possess,  and  more  helps  from  books  than 
you  can  always  expect  to  command.  There  is  an- 
other process,  and  one  which  may  prove  no  less  use- 
ful to  yourselves  and  to  others,  which  will  lie  more 
certainly  within  your  reach.  It  will  often  happen 
that  you  will  meet  in  books,  sometimes  in  the  same 
book,  and  perhaps  in  the  same  page  of  this  book,  a 
word  used  in  senses  so  far  apart  from  one  another, 
that  it  will  seem  to  you  at  first  sight  almost  absurd 
to  assume  as  possible  that  there  can  be  any  bond  of 
connection  between  them.  Now  when  you  do  thus 
fall  in  with  a  word  employed  in  these  two  or  more 
senses  seemingly  far  removed  from  one  another,  ac- 
custom yourselves  to  seek  out  the  bond  which  there 
certainlv  is  between  these  its  several  uses.  This 


THE   WOKD   POST.  205 

tracing  of  that  which  is  common  to  and  connects  all  \ 
its  meanings  can  of  course  oiily  be  done  by  getting 
to  its  heart,  to  the  seininal  meaning,  from  which,  as 
from  a  fruitful  .seed,  all  the  others  unfold  themselves  ;  [ 
to  the  first  link  in  the  chain,  from  which  every  later 
one,  in  a  direct  line  or  a  lateral,  depends.  And  we  I 
may  proceed  in  this  investigation,  certain  that  we 
shall  find  such,  or  at  least  that  such  there  is  to  be 
found.  For  this  we  may  start  with,  as  being  lifted 
above  all  doubt  (and  the  non-recognition  of  it  is  the 
great  fault  in  Johnson's  dictionary),  that  a  word  has 
originally  but  one  meaning,  and  that  all  the  others,* 
however  widely  they  may  diverge  from  one  another 
and  seem  to  recede  from  this  one,  may  yet  be  affili- 
ated upon  it,  may  be  brought  back  to  the  one  central 
meaning,  which  grasps  and  knits  them  all  together  ; 
just  as  the  races  of  men,  black,  white,  and  red,  de- 
spite of  all  their  present  diversity  and  dispersion, 
have  a  central  point  of  unity  in  their  first  parents. 
Let  me  illustrate  what  I  mean  by  two  or  three 
familiar  examples.  Here  is  the  word  "  post ;"  how 
various  are  the  senses  in  which  it  is  employed ;  "  post"- 
office ;  "  posf'-haste  ;  a  "  post"  standing  in  the  ground ; 
a  military  "  post ;"  an  official  "  post ;"  "  to  post"  a 
leger.  Might  one  not  at  first  presume  it  impossible 
to  bring  all  these  uses  of  "  post"  to  a  common  centre  ? 
Yet  indeed  when  once  on  the  right  track,  nothing  is 
easier;  "post"  is  the  Latin  "positus,"  that  which  is 
placed ;  the  piece  of  timber  is  "  placed"  in  the 


206        THE  SCHOOLMASTER'S  USE  OF  WOEDS. 

ground,  and  so  a  "post;"  a  military  station  is  a 
"post,"  for  a  man  is  "placed"  in  it,  and  must  not 
quit  it  without  orders  ;  to  travel  "  post,"  is  to  have 
Certain  relays  of  horses  "placed"  at  intervals,  that 
so  no  delay  on  the  road  may  occur ;  the  "  posf'-office 
is  that  which  avails  itself  of  this  mode  of  communi- 
cation ;  to  "  post"  a  leger  is  to  "  place"  or  register 
its  several  items. 

Or  take  the  word  "  stock ;"  in  what  an  almost  in- 
finite number  of  senses  it  is  employed  ;  we  have  live 
"  stock,"  "  stock"  in  trade,  the  village  "  stocks,"  the 
"  stock"  of  a  gun,  the  "  stock"  dove,  the  "  stocks"  on 
which  ships  are  built,  the  "  stock"  which  goes  round 
the  neck,  the  family  "  stock,"  the  "  stocks,"  or  public 
funds,  in  which  money  is  invested,  and  other  "  stocks" 
very  likely  besides  these.  "What  point  in  common 
can  we  find  between  them  all  ?  This,  that  they  are 
all  derived  from,  and  were  originally  the  past  parti- 
ciple of  "  to  stick,"  which  as  it  now  makes  "  stuok," 
made  formerly  "  stock  ;"  and  they  cohere  in  the  idea 
oi  fixedness,  which  is  common  to  every  one.  Thus, 
the  "  stock"  of  a  gun  is  that  in  which  the  barrel  is 
fixed ;  the  village  "  stocks"  are  those  in  which  the 
feet  are  fastened ;  the  "  stock"  in  trade  is  the  fixed 
capital ;  and  so,  too,  the  "  stock"  on  -frhe  farm,  al- 
though the  fixed  capital  has  there  taken  the  shape 
of  horses  and  cattle  ;  in  the  "  stocks,"  or  public  funds, 
money  sticks  fast,  inasmuch  as  those  who  place  it 
there  can  not  withdraw  or  demand  the  capital,  but 


THE   WORD   QUICK.  207 

receive  only  the  interest ;  the  "  stock"  of  a  tree 
is  fast  set  in  the  ground;  and  from  this  use  of  the 
word  it  is  transferred  to  a  family ;  the  "  stock"  or 
"  stirps"  is  that  from  which  it  grows,  and  out  of 
which  it  unfolds  itself.  And  here  we  may  bring  in 
the  "  stock"-dove,  as  being  the  "  stock"  or  stirps 
of  the  domestic  kinds.  I  might  group  with  these, 
"  stake"  in  both  its  spellings  ;  a  "  stake"  in  the 
hedge  is  stuck  and  fixed  there  ;  the  "  stakes"  which 
men  wager  against  the  issue  of  a  race  are  paid  down, 
and  thus  fixed  or  deposited  to  answer  the  event;  a 
beef-"  steak"  is  a  piece  of  meat  so  small  that  it  can 
be  stuck  on  the  point  of  a  fork ;  with  much  more  of 
the  same  kind. 

How  often  does  the  word  "  quick"  in  the  creed 
perplex  children  ;  and  even  after  they  have  learned 
that  "  the  quick  and  the  dead"  mean  the  living  and 
the  dead,  they  know  it  only  on  trust ;  for  they  fail 
to  put  this  "  quick"  in  any  connection  with  the 
"  quick"  of  their  own  vocabulary,  the  "  quick"  with 
which  they  bid  one  another  to  throw  up  the  ball,  or 
the  "  quick"-set  hedge  which  runs  round  their  fa- 
ther's garden,  or  the  "  quick"  parts  for  which  some 
unwise  person  has  praised  one  of  them  at  school : 
yet  that  all  these  are  one  and  the  same  "  quick"  it  is 
of  course  very  easy  to  show.  Life  is  the  fundamen- 
tal idea  of  the  word  "  quick,"  and  in  this  its  primary 
sense  it  is  used  in  the  creed,  "  the  quick  and  the 
dead  :"  so  too  the  "  quick"-set  hedge  is  properly  the 


THE  SCHOOLMASTER'S  USE  OF  WORDS. 

living  fence,  as  contrasted  with  those  made  of  dead 
timbers.  But  motion,  as  it  is  at  once  of  the  essence, 
so  it  is  also  one  of  the  most  obvious  signs  of  life ;  and 
thus  "  quick"  in  a  secondary  sense  was  applied  to 
all  which  was  rapid  or  prompt  in  its  motions,  wheth- 
er bodily  or  mental ;  thus  a  "  quick"  runner,  a  boy 
of  "  quick"  parts ;  and  so  too  "  quick"-silver,  and 
"  quick"  or  fast  shifting  sands.  The  same  sense  of 
'the  connection  between  life  and  motion  has  given  us 
our  secondary  use  of  the  words,  "  animated"  and 
"  lively." 

Sometimes  a  slightly-different  spelling  comes  in 
aid  of  an  enormous  divergence  of  meaning,  to  dis- 
guise the  fact  of  two  words  having  originally  rested 
on  one  and  the  same  etymology,  and  really  being  so 
closely  related  to  one  another,  that  we  may  say,  in 
fact,  they  are  one  and  the  same  word.  I  would  in- 
stance as  a  notable  example  of  this,  "  canon"  with  a 
single  n,  as  the  "  canon"  of  scripture,  and  "  cannon," 
or  heavy  artillery.  Can  there,  it  may  well  be  asked, 
be  aoy  point  in  common  between  them  ?  can  they 
be  resolved  ultimately  into  the  same  word  ?  I  be- 
lieve they  can.  The  word  "  canon"  with  the  single 
n,  which  is  a  Greek  word,  means  properly  "  rule  ;" 
first,  the  measuring  rule  or  line  of  the  carpenter ; 
and  then  figuratively  any  measure  or  rule  by  which 
we  try  other  things ;  and  in  its  crowning  use,  the 
Holy  Scriptures,  as  being  regulative  of  life  and  doc- 
trine in  the  church.  But  the  carpenter's  rule  was 


CANON,    CANNON.  209 

commonly  a  reed  (canna),  that  being  selected  on  ac- 
count of  its  straightness  ;  you  may  remember  in 
scripture  mention  once  or  twice  being  made  of  the 
measuring  "reed"  (Rev.  xxi.  15,  16); 'and  from  this 
reed  or  "  canna,"  the  rule  or  line  (the  "  canon")  had 
its  name,  or  at  any  rate  the  words  are  most  closely 
allied.  A  reed,  however,  as  we  all  know,  besides 
being  straight  is  also  hollow,  and  thus  it  came  to 
pass  when  the  hollow  engines  of  war,  our  modern 
artillery,  were  invented,  and  were  feeling  about  for 
their  appropriate  name,  none  was  nearer  at  hand 
than  this  which  the  reed  supplied,  and  they  were 
called  "  cannon"  too.* 

When  it  is  thus  said  that  we  can  always  reduce 
the  different  meanings  in  which  a  word  is  employed 
to  some  one  point  from  which  they  all  immediately 
or  mediately  proceed,  that  no  word  has  primarily 
more  than  one  meaning,  it  must  be  remembered  that 
it  is  quite  possible  there  may  be  two  words  pro- 
nounced and  even  spelled  exactly  alike,  which  yet 
are  wholly  different  in  their  derivation  and  primary 
usage ;  and  that  of  course  between  these  no  bond  of 
union  on  the  score  of  this  identity  is  to  be  sought ; 
neither  does  this  fact  in  the  least  invalidate  the  as- 
sertion. "We  have  in  such  cases,  as  Cobbett  has  ex- 

*  In  confirmation  of  this  view  of  the  derivation  of  "  cannon,"  and 
in  proof  that  it  lay  very  near  to  the  imagination  of  men  to  liken 
them  to  reeds,  we  have  the  application  of  "  Rohr"  in  German,  which, 
at  first  signifying  a  cane  or  reed,  has  in  like  manner  been  applied  to 
the  barrel  of  a  gun. 


210        THE  SCHOOLMASTER'S  USE  OF  WORDS. 

pressed  it  well,  the  same  combination  of  letters,  but 
not  the  same  word.  Thus  we  have  "  page,"  one  side 
of  a  leaf,  from  "  pagina,"  and  "  page,"  a  youthful 
attendant,  from  quite  another  word ;  "  league,"  a 
treaty,  from  "ligare,"  to  bind,  and  "league,"  a 
measure  of  distance,  thought  to  be  a  word  of  Gallic 
origin;  we '  have  "host,"  an  army,  from  "hostis," 
and  "  host,"  in  the  Roman  catholic  sacrifice  of  the 
mass,  from  "  hostia ;"  so,  too,  "  stories,"  which  we 
tell,  and  "  stories"  or  "  stayeries"  of  a  house,  which 
we  mount ;  "  Mosaic,"  as  the  "  Mosaic"  law,  derived 
from  the  name  of  the  great  lawgiver  of  Israel,  "  mosa- 
ic," as  "mosaic  work,"  which  is  "opus  musivum /" 
with  other  words,  such  as  "  date,"  "  mint,"  "  ounce," 
"  dole,"  "  bull,"  « plain,"  not  a  few.  In  all  these 
the  identity  is  merely  on  the  surface,  and  it  would 
of  course  be  lost  labor  to  seek  for  a  point  of  contact 
between  meanings  which  have  not  any  closer  con- 
nection really  than  apparently  with  one  another. 

Let  me  suggest  some  further  exercises  in  this  region 
of  words,  which  I  will  venture  to  promise  that  you 
will  find  profitable  as  ministering  to  the  activity  of 
your  own  minds,  as  helping  to  call  out  a  like  activity 
in  those  of  others.  Do  not,  I  would  say  then  once 
more,  suffer  words  to  pass  you  by,  which  at  once 
provoke  and  promise  to  reward  inquiry,  by  the 
readiness  with  which  evidently  they  will  yield  up 
the  secret  of  their  birth  or  of  their  use,  if  duly  inter- 
rogated by  us.  Many  we  must  all  be  content  to 


WHAT   CANDIDATE   MEANS.  211 

leave,  whi  h  will  defy  all  efforts  to  dissipate  the 
mystery  which  hangs  over  them,  but  of  many  also  it 
is  evident  on  their  surface  that  these  explanations 
can  not  be  very  far  to  seek.  I  would  instance  such 
a  word  as  "  candidate."  At  a  contested  election 
how  familiar  are  the  ears  of  all  with  this  word,  nor 
can  it  be  said  to  be  strange  to  us  at  other  times. 
!N"ow  does  it  not  argue  an  incurious,  spirit  to  be  con- 
tent that  this  word  should  thus  be  given  and  re- 
ceived by  us  a  hundred  times,  and  we  never  to  ask 
ourselves,  What  does  it  mean  ?  Why  is  one  seek- 
ing to  be  elected  to  a  seat  in .  parliament,  or  other- 
wise offering  himself  to  the  choice  of  his  fellows, 
called  a  "  candidate"  ?  If  the  word  lay  evidently 
beyond  our  reach,  we  might  acquiesce  in  our  igno- 
rance here,  as  in  such  infinite  other  matters ;  but 
resting,  as  on  the  face  of  it  it  does,  upon  the  Latin 
"  candidus,"  it  challenges  inquiry,  and  a  very  little 
of  this  would  at  once  put  us  in  possession  of  the  Ro- 
man custom  out  of  which  the  word  grew,  and  to 
which  it  alludes — namely,  that  those  who  intended 
to  offer  themselves  to  the  suffrages  of  the  people  for 
any  of  the  great  offices  of  the  state,  presented  them- 
selves beforehand  to  them  in  a  white  toga,  being 
called  therefore  "  candidati,"  with  other  not  unin- 
teresting particulars.  And  as  it  so  often  happens 
that  in  the  act  of  seeking  information  on  one  subject 
we  obtain  it  upon  another,  so  will  it  probably  be 
here ;  for  in  making  yourself  fully  aware  of  what 


212 


THE   SCHOOLMASTER  S    USE   OF   WORDS. 


this  custom  was,  you  will  hardly  fail  to  learn  the 
original  meaning  of  "  ambition,"  and  whence  we 
have  obtained  the  word. 

Or,  again,  any  one  who  knows  so  much  as  that 
"  verbum"  means  a  "  word,"  might  well  be  struck 
by  the  fact,  and  if  he  followed  it  up  would  be  led 
far  into  the  relation  of  the  parts  of  speech  to  one  an- 
other, that  grammarians  do  not  employ  "  verbum," 
as  one  might  previously  have  expected,  to  signify 
any  word  whatsoever,  but  restrict  it  to  the  verb 
alone  ;  "  verbum"  is  the  verb.  Surely  here  is  mat- 
ter for  thought ;  why  does  the  verb  monopolize  the 
dignity  of  being  the  "word"?  what  is  there  in  it 
which  gives  it  the  right  to  do  so?  Is  it  because  the 
verb  is  the  animating  power,  the  vital  principle  of 
every  sentence,  and  that  without  which,  either  un- 
derstood or  uttered,  no  sentence  can  exist?  or  is 
there  any  other  cause  ?  I  leave  this  to  your  own 
consideration. 

Again,  here  is  "conscience,"  a  solemn  word,  if 
there  be  such  in  the  world.  Now  there  is  not  one 
of  us  whose  Latin  will  not  bring  him  so  for  as  to  tell 
him  that  this  word  is  from  "  con"  and  "  scire."  But 
what  does  that  "  con"  intend  ?  "  Conscience"  is  not 
merely  that  which  I  know,  but  that  which  I  know 
with  some  one  else  ;  for  this  prefix  can  not,  as  I  think, 
be  esteemed  superfluous,  or  taken  to  imply  merely 
that  which  I  know  with  or  to  myself.  That  other 
knower  whom  the  word  implies  is  God,  his  law  ma- 


CONSCIEXCE —  CLASSICS.  lM  3 

king  itself  known  and  felt  in  the  heart;  and  the 
work  of  "  conscience"  is  the  bringing  of  each  of  our 
acts  and  thoughts  as  a  lesser,  to  he  tried  and  meas- 
ured by  this  as  a  greater,  the  word  growing  out  of 
and  declaring  that  awful  duplicity  of  our  moral  be- 
ing which  arises  from  the  presence  of  God  in  the 
soul — our  thoughts  by  the  standard  which  that 
presence  supplies,  and  as  the  result  of  a  comparison 
with  it,  "  accusing  or  excusing  one  another."* 

Once  more,  you  call  certain  books  "  classics." 
You  have  indeed  a  double  use  of  the  word,  for  you 
speak  of  Greek  and  Latin  as  the  classical  languages, 
and  the  great  writers  in  these  as  "  the  classics ;" 
while  at  other  times  you  hear  of  a  "  classical"  Eng- 
lish style,  or  of  English  "  classics."  'Now  "  classic" 
is  connected  plainly,  as  we  all  perceive,  with  "  clas- 
sis."  "What  then  does  it  mean  in  itself,  and  how 
has  it  arrived  at  this  double  use  ?  "  The  term  is 


*  Many  ethical  writers,  as  is  well  known,  pass  by  the  "  con"  in 
their  explanation  of  "  conscience,"  finding  merely  the  expression  of 
the  certainty  of  the  inner  moral  conviction  in  the  word ;  for  which 
view  they  sometimes  adduce  the  German  "  gewissen ;"  yet  I  can  not 
think  but  that  herein  they  err  :  "  conscience,"  in  the  words  of  South, 
"  according  to  the  very  notation  of  it,  importing  a  double  or  joint 
knowledge ;  to  wit>  one  of  a  divine  law  or  rule,  and  the  other  of  a 
man's  own  action ;  and  so  is  properly  the  application  of  a  general 
law  to  a  particular  instance  of  practice.  And  Vossius  (De  Theol. 
Gent.  3,  42):  "Est  enim  conscientia  syllogismus,  cujus  major  est 
principium  practicum  a  conscientia.  suggestum ;  minor  est  bona,  ma- 
lave  actio  nostra ;  conclusio  autem  actionem  ad  normam  istius  prin- 
cipii  collatarn,  aut  probat,  aut  improbat;  ex  quo,  pro  conclusionia 
diversitate,  vel  tranquilitas  animi  sequitur,  vel  intranquillitas." 


214:        THE  SCHOOLMASTER'S  USE  OF  WOEDS. 

drawn  from  the  political  economy  of  Rome.  Such 
a  man  was  rated  as  to  his  income  in  the  third  class, 
such  another  in  the  fourth,  and  so  on  ;  but  he  who 
was  in  the  highest  was  emphatically  said  to  be  of 
the  class,  '  classicus'  —  a  class-man,  without  adding 
the  number,  as  in  that  case  superfluous ;  while  all 
others  were  infra  classem.  Hence,  by  an  obvious 
analog}*,  the  best  authors  were  rated  as  '  classici,' 
or  men  of  the  highest  class ;  just  as  in  English  we 
say  '  men  of  rank,'  absolutely  for  men  who  are  in 
the  highest  ranks  of  the  state."  The  mental  process 
by  which  this  title,  which  would  apply  rightly  to 
the  best  authors  in  all  languages,  came  to  be  often 
confined  to  those  only  in  two,  and  those  two  to  be 
claimed,  to  the  seeming  exclusion  of  all  others,  as 
the  classical  languages,  is  one  of  the  most  constantly 
recurring,  and  most  widely  extended,  making  itself 
felt  in  all  times  and  in  all  regions  of  human  life,  and 
one  to  which  I  would  in  passing  just  direct  your  at- 
tention, though  I  can  not  here  do  more. 

But  seek,  I  would  further  urge  you,  to  attain  a  con- 
sciousness of  the  multitude  of  words  which  there  are, 
that  now  use  only  in  a  figurative  sense,  did  yet 
originally  rest  on  some  fact  of  the  outward  world, 
vividly  presenting  itself  to  the  imagination ;  a  fact 
which  the  word  has  incorporated  for  ever,  having 
become,  as  all  words  originally  were,  the  indestruc- 
tible vesture  of  a  thought.  If  I  may  judge  from  my 
own  experience,  I  think  there  are  few  intelligent 


IMAGERY    IK    WORDS. 

boys  in  your  schools,  who  would  not  feel  that  they 
had  gotten  something,  when  you  had  shown  them 
that  "  to  insult"  means  properly  to  leap  as  on  the 
prostrate  body  of  a  foe  ;  "  to  affront,"  to  strike  him 
on  the  face ;  that  "  to  succor"  means  to  run  and 
place  oneself  under  one  that  is  falling,  and  thus  sup- 
port and  sustain  him ;  "  to  relent"  (connected  with 
"  lentus,"  not  "  lenis"),  to  slacken  the  swiftness  of 
one's  pursuit ;  "  to  reprehend,"  to  lay  hold  of  one 
with  the  intention  of  forcibly  pulling  him  back  from 
the  way  of  his  error ;  that  "  to  be  examined"  means 
to  be  weighed.  They  would  be  pleased  to  learn  that 
a  man  is  called  "  supercilious,"  because  haughtiness 
with  contempt  of  others  expresses  itself  by  the  rais- 
ing of  the  eyebrows  or  "  supercilium  ;"  that  "  subtle" 
is  literally  "  fine-spun  ;"*'  that  "  imbecile,"  which  we 
use  for  weak,  and  now  always  for  weak  in  intellect, 
means  strictly  (unless  indeed  we  must  renounce  this 
etymology),  leaning  upon  a  staff  (in  bacillo),  as  one 
aged  or  infirm  might  do ;  that  "  chaste"  is  properly 
white,  "  castus"  being  the  participle  of  "  candeo," 
as  is  now  generally  allowed ;  that  "  astonished" 
means  struck  with  thunder ;  that  "  sincere"  may  be, 
I  will  not  say  that  it  is,  without  wax  (sine  cerd),  as 
the  best  and  finest  honey  should  be ;  that  a  "  com- 
panion" is  one  with  whom  we  share  our  bread,  a 
messmate ;  that  "  desultory,"  which  perhaps  they 
have  been  warned  they  should  not  be  in  their 
*  Subtilis=subtexilis. 


216        THE  SCHOOLMASTEK'S  USE  OF  WOEDS. 

studies,  but  have  never  attached  any  very  definite 
meaning  to  the  warning,  means  properly  leaping  as 
a  rider  in  the  circus  does  from  the  back  of  one  run- 
ning horse  to  the  back  of  another,  this  rider  being 
technically  called  a  "  desultor ;"  and  the  word  being 
transferred  from  him  to  those  who  suddenly'  and 
abruptly  change  their  courses  of  study. 

"Trivial,"  again,  is  a  word  borrowed  from  the 
life;  mark  three  or  four  persons  standing  idly  at 
the  point  where  one  street  bisects  at  right  angles  an- 
other, and  discussing  there  the  worthless  gossip,  the 
idle  nothings  of  the  day  ;  there  you  have  the  living 
explanation  of  the  words  "  trivial,"  "  trivialities," 
such  as  no  explanation  which  did  not  thus  root  itself 
in  the  etymology  would  ever  give  you,  or  enable  you 
to  give  to  others.  For  there  you  have  the  "tres 
vise,"  the  "trivium;"  and  "trivialities"  properly 
mean  such  talk  as  is  holden  by  those  idle  loiterers 
that  gather  at  these  meetings  of  three  roads.  And 
"rivals"  by  curious  steps  has  attained  its  present 
meaning ;  the  history  of  which  steps  can  hardly  fail 
to  interest.  "  Rivals,"  in  the  primary  sense  of  the 
word,  are  those  who  dwell  on  the  banks  of  the  same 
stream.  But  since,  as  all  experience  shows,  there  is 
no  such  fruitful  source  of  contention  as  a  water-right, 
it  would  continually  happen  that  these  occupants  of 
the  opposite  banks  would  be  at  strife  with  one  an- 
other in  regard  of  the  periods  during  which  they 
severally  had  a  right  to  the  use  of  the  stream,  turn- 


NAMES   OF   ENGLISH    BIKDS.  217 

ing  .it  off  into  their  own  fields  before  the  time,  or 
leaving  open  the  sluices  beyond  the  time,  or  in  other 
ways  interfering,  or  being  counted  to  interfere,  with 
the  rights  of  their  opposite  neighbors.  And  thus 
"  rivals,"  which  at  first  applied  only  to  those  dwel- 
lers on  opposite  banks  of  a  river,  came  afterward  to 
be  used  of  any  who  were  on  any  grounds  ill  more 
or  less  unfriendly  competition  with  one  another. 

Or  if  your  future  pupils  shall  be  your  companions 
in  your  walks  (as  it  always  speaks  well  for  a  teach- 
er's influence  that  he  is  sought,  not  shunned  by  his 
pupils  in  play  hours),  how  much  will  there  be  which 
you  may  profitably  impart  to  them,  suggested  by  the 
names  of  common  things  which  will  meet  you  there ; 
how  much  which  you,  if  you  know  it,  will  love  to 
tell,  and  they  will  be  well  pleased  to  hear.  Who 
would  not  care,  for  instance,  to  know  something  about 
the  names  of  our  English  birds ;  that  the  "  king-fish- 
er," which  attracted  all  eyes  as  it  darted  swiftly  by 
the  river's  edge,  was  so  called  from  the  royal  beauty, 
the  kingly  splendor  of  its  plumage ;  that  the  "hawk," 
if  it  be  not  the  same  word  with  "  havoc"  (and  it  was 
called  "  hafoc"  in  Anglo-Saxon),  has  at  least  a  com- 
mon origin  ;  its  very  name  announcing  the  "  havoc" 
and  destruction  which  it  makes  among  the  smaller 
birds,  just  as  in  the  "  raven's"  name  is  expressed  its 
greedy,  or  as  we  say  "  ravenous,"  disposition  ?  Or 
when  they  are  listening  of  an  evening  to  the  harsh 

10 


218        THE  SCHOOLMASTER'S  USE  OF  WORDS. 

shriekings  of  the  "  owl,"  that  the  name  of  this  disso- 
nant night-bird  is  in  fact  the  past  participle  of  "  to 
yell,"  and  diifers  from  "howl"  in  nothing  but  its 
spelling,  as  plainly  comes  out  in  the  fact  that  the 
diminutive  is  as  often  spelt  with  an  h  as  without  it — 
"  howlets"  as  often  as  "  owlets"  ?  Even  the  little 
"  dabchick"  which  so  haunts  our  waters  here,  diving 
and  dipping  when  any  one  approaches,  it  may  be  as 
well  to  know  why  it  has  this  name,  that  the  first  syl- 
lable would  more  correctly  be  spelt  with  ap  than  a 
5,  this  "  dap"  being  the  old  perfect  of  "  to  dip,"  so 
that  the  name  is  no  idle  unmeaning  thing,  but  brings 
out  the  most  salient  characteristic  of  the  bird  which 
bears  it,  it  swift  diving  and  "dipping"  under  the 
water  at  every  apprehension  of  danger :  just  as  in 
Latin  a  certain  water-fowl  is  called  "  mergus,"  from 
"  mergo." 

Or  taking  them  into  the  corn-fields,  you  may  point 
out  how  the  "  cockle"  which  springs  np  only  too  lux- 
uriantly in  some  of  our  Hampshire  furrows,  acquires 
its  name  from  that  which  often  it  effectually  does, 
namely  from  its  "choking"  or  strangling  the  good  seed. 
And  the  word  "  field"  itself  is  worth  taking  note  of, 
for  it  throws  us  back  upon  a  period  when  England 
was  covered,  as  is  a  great  part  of  America  now,  with 
forests ;  "  field"  meaning  properly  a  clearing  where 
the  trees  have  been  "  felled,"  or  cut  down,  as  in  all 
our  early  English  writers  it  is  spelt  without  the  it 
ufeld"  and  not  "field,"  even  as  you  will  find  in  them 


AMUSEMENT,   RELAXATION.  219 

that  u  wood"  and  "  feld"  are  continually  set  over, 
and  contrasted  with,  one  another. 

In  such  ways  you  may  often  improve,  and  without 
turning  play-time  into  lesson-time,  the  hours  of  relax- 
ation and  amusement.  But  I  must  not  here  let  es- 
cape me  these  words, "  relaxation"  and  "  amusement," 
on  which  I  have  lighted  as  by  chance.  "  Amuse- 
ment," or  as  with  another  striking  image  we  call  it, 
"  recreation,"  what  is  it,  and  what  does  it  affirm  of 
itself?  Why  plainly  this,  that  it  must  be  first  earned  ; 
for  let  us  only  question  the  word  a  little  closer,  and 
see  what  it  involves.  It  is  plainly,  "  a  musis,"  that 
is,  a  temporary  suspension  of,  and  turning  away  from, 
severer  studies,  which  severer  studies  are  represented 
here  by  the  Muses,  who,  I  may  just  remind  you, 
were  the  patronesses  in  old  time  not  of  poetry  alone, 
but  of  history,  geometry,  and  all  other  studies  as 
well.  "What  shall  we  then  say  of  them,  who  would 
fain  have  their  lives  to  be  all  "  amusement,"  or  who 
claim  it  otherwise  than  as  this  temporary  withdrawal 
"a  musis"?  The  very  word  condemns  them;  even 
as  that  other  word  "  relaxation"  does  the  same.  How 
can  the  bow  be  relaxed  or  slackened,  for  this  of  course 
is  the  image,  which  has  not  ever  been  bent,  whose 
string  has  never  been  drawn  tight?  Let  us  draw  it 
tight  by  earnest  toil,  and  then  we  may  look  to  have 
it  from  time  to  time  relaxed.  Having  been  attentive 
and  assiduous,  then,  but  not  otherwise,  we  may  claim 
relaxation  and  amusement.  But  "  attentive"  and 


220        THE  SCHOOLMASTER'S  USE  OF  WORDS. 

"assiduous,"  are  themselves  words  which  it  is  worth 
our  while  to  realize  what  they  mean.  He  then  is 
"  assiduous,"  who  sits  close  to  his  work ;  he  is  "  atten- 
tive," who  stretches  out  his  neck  that  so  he  may  bring 
the  organ  of  hearing  nearer  to  the  speaker,  and  lose 
none  of  his  words.  And  then  what  a  lesson  the  word 
"  diligence"  contains.  How  profitable  is  it  for  every 
one  of  us  to  be  reminded,  as  we  are  reminded  when 
we  make  ourselves  aware  of  its  derivation  from 
"  diligo,"  to  love,  that  the  only  secret  of  true  industry 
in  our  work  is  love  of  that  work.  And  as  there  is  a 
great  truth  wrapped  up  in  "  diligence,"  what  a  lie  on 
the  other  hand  lurks  at  the  root  of  our  present  use  of 
the  word  " indolence."  This  is  from  "in"  and  " do- 
leo,"  not  to  grieve ;  and  "  indolence"  is  thus  a  state 
in  which  we  have  no  grief  or  pain ;  so  that  the  word, 
employed  as  we  now  employ  it,  seems  to  affirm  that 
indulgence  in  sloth  and  ease  is  that  which  would 
constitute  for  us  the  absence  of  all  pain.  Now  it 
may  be  quite  true  that  "  pain"  and  "  pains"  are  often 
nearly  allied  ;  no  one  would  wish  to  deny  this ;  but 
yet  these  pains  hand  us  over  to  true  pleasures ;  while 
indolence  is  so  far  from  yielding  what  it  is  so  forward 
to  promise,  and  we  with  our  slothful  self-indulgent 
hearts  are  so  ready  to  expect,  that  Cowper  spoke  only 
truth,  when,  perhaps  purposing  expressly  to  witness 
against  the  falsehood  of  this  word,  he  spoke  of 
"  Lives  spent  in  indolence,  and  therefore  sad." 

not  " therefore  glad"  as  the  word  would  promise. 


FOSTERING   A    NATIONAL   SPIRIT.  221 

Let  me  mention  another  method  in  which  these 
studies  which  I  have  been  urging  upon  you,  may  bo 
turned  to.  account  in  your  future  work.  Doubtless 
you  will  ever  seek  to  cherish  in  your  scholars,  to  keep 
lively  in  yourselves,  that  spirit  and  temper  which  at- 
tach a  special  value  and  interest  to  all  having  to  do 
with  the  land  of  our  birth,  that  land  which  the  provi- 
dence of  God  has  assigned  as  the  sphere  of  our  life's 
work  and  of  theirs.  Our  schools  are  called  "  nation- 
al," and  if  we  would  have  them  such  more  than  in 
name  we  must  neglect  nothing  that  will  assist  us  in 
fostering  a  national  spirit  in  them.  I  know  not 
whether  this  is  sufficiently  considered  among  us,  and 
yet  I  am  sure  that  we  can  not  have  church  schools 
worthy  the  name,  and  least  of  all  in  England,  unless 
they  are  truly  national  as  well.  It  is  the  anti-nation- 
al character  of  the  Romish  system,  though  I  do  not 
in  the  least  separate  this  from  its  anti-scriptural,  but 
rather  regard  the  two  as  most  intimately  cohering 
with  one  another,  which  mainly  revolts  Englishmen ; 
as  we  have  lately  very  plainly  seen ;  and  if  their 
sense  of  this  should  ever  grow  weak,  their  protest 
against  that  system  would  soon  lose  nearly  all  of  its 
energy  and  strength.  Now  here,  as  everywhere  else, 
knowledge  must  be  the  food  of  love.  Your  pupils 
must  know  something  about  England,  if  they  are  to 
love  it ;  they  must  see  some  connection  of  its  past 
with  its  present,  of  what  it  has  been  with  what  it  now 
is,  if  they  are  to  feel  that  past  as  anything  to  them. 


222        THE  SCHOOLMASTER'S  USE  OP  WORDS. 

And  as  no  impresses  of  the  past  upon  the  present 
are  so  abiding,  so  none,  when  once  attention  has  been 
awakened  to  them,  are  so  self-evident  as  those  which 
names  preserve ;  although,  without  this  calling  of  the 
attention  to  them,  the  most  broad  and  obvious  of 
these  foot-prints  of  time  may  very  probably  continue 
to  escape  our  observation  to  the  end  of  our  lives. 
Leibnitz  tell  us,  and  one  can  quite  understand,  the 
delight  with  which  a  great  German  emperor,  Maxi- 
milian the  First,  discovered  that  "  Habsburg,"  the 
ancestral  name  of  his  house,  really  had  a  meaning, 
one  moreover  full  of  vigoi;and  poetry.  This  he  did, 
when  he  heard  it  by  accident  on  the  lips  of  a  Swiss 
peasant,  no  longer  cut  short  and  thus  disguised,  but 
in  its  original  fullness,  "  Habichtsburg,"  or  "  Hawk's 
tower,"  being  no  doubt  the  name  of  the  castle  which 
was  the  cradle  of  his  race.  Of  all  the  thousands  of 
Englishmen  who  are  aware  that  the  Angles  and  Sax- 
ons established  themselves  in  this  island,  and  that  we 
are  in  the  main  descended  from  them,  it  would 
be  curious  to  know  how  many  have  realized  that 
this  "  England"  means  "  Angle-land,"  or  that  in  the 
names  Essex,  Sussex,  and  Middlesex,  we  preserve  a 
record  to  this  day  of  East-Saxons,  South-Saxons,  and 
Middle-Saxons,  who  occupied  those  several  portions 
of  the  land ;  or  that  Norfolk  and  Suffolk  are  two 
broad  divisions  of  "  northern"  and  "  southern  folk," 
into  which  the  East-Anglian  kingdom  was  divided. 
I  can  not  but  believe  that  these  Angles  and  these 


MARKS  LEFT  BY  THE  DANES.         223 

Saxons,  about  whom  our  pupils  may  be  reading,  will 
be  to  them  more  like  actual  men  of  flesh  and  blood, 
who  indeed  trod  this  same  soil  which  we  are  tread- 
ing now,  when  we  can  thus  point  to  the  traces  of 
them  surviving  to  the  present  day,  which  they  have 
left  behind  them,  and  which  England,  as  long  as  it 
is  England,  will  retain. 

And  then  as  regards  the  Danes — all  of  us  who  are 
at  all  acquainted  with  the  early  history  of  our  land, 
will  be  aware  how  much  Danish  blood  there  is  in 
the  veins  of  Englishmen ;  what  large  colonies  from 
Scandinavia  (for  probably  as  many  came  from  Nor- 
way as  from  modern  Denmark),  settled  in  some  parts 
of  this  island.  It  will  be  interesting  to  show  that 
the  limits  of  this  Danish  settlement  and  occupation 
may  even  now  be  confidently  traced  by  the  frequent 
occurrence  in  all  such  districts  of  the  names  of  towns 
and  villages  ending  in  "  bye,"  which  word  signified 
in  their  language,  "  town,"  as  Netherby,  Appleby, 
Derby.  Thus  if  you  examine  closely  a  map  of  Lin- 
colnshire, one  of  the  chief  seats,  as  is  well  known,  of 
Danish  immigration,  you  will  find  that  well-nigh  a 
fourth  part  of  the  towns  and  villages  have  this  end- 
ing; the  whole  coast  is  indeed  studded  with  them; 
while  here  in  Hampshire  it  is  utterly  unknown. 

Who  that  has  seen  London  from  one  of  its  bridges, 
with  that  wondrous  forest  of  masts  stretching  down 
the  river,  or  that  has  only  heard  of  its  commerce,  but 
would  learn  with  interest  that  "  London,"  according 


224        THE  SCHOOLMASTER'S  USE  OF  WORDS. 

to  the  most  probable  etymology,  is  a  name  formed 
out  of  two  Celtic  words,  and  means,  "  city  of  ships"  ? 
Such  a  prophecy  of  the  future  greatness  of  the  great 
commercial  capital  of  England  and  of  the  world  lay 
from  the  very  first  in  the  name  which  it  bore  ;  not  to 
say  that  this  name  indicates  that  from  earliest  times, 
before  a  Roman  had  set  his  foot  upon  the  soil,  the 
wonderfully  advantageous  position  of  London  for 
commerce  had  been  discovered  and  improved. 

You  are  yourselves  learning,  or  hereafter  you  may 
be  teaching  others,  the  names  and  number  of  the 
English  counties  or  shires.  What  a  dull  routine  task 
for  them  and  for  you  this  may  be,  tasking  the  memory, 
but  supplying  no  food  for  the  intellect,  no  points  of 
attachment  for  any  of  its  higher  powers  to  take  hold 
of.  And  yet  in  these  two  little  words  "  shire"  and 
"  county,"  if  you  would  make  them  render  up  even 
a  small  part  of  their  treasure,  what  lessons  of  English 
history  are  contained.  One  who  knows  the  origin  of 
these  names,  and  how  we  come  to  possess  such  a 
double  nomenclature,  looks  far  into  the  social  condi- 
tion of  England  in  that  period  when  the  rudimental 
germs  of  all  that  has  since  made  it  glorious  and  great 
were  being  laid,  and  by  these  words  may  show  how  the 
present  links  itself  with  the  remotest  past ;  how  of  a 
land  as  of  a  person,  it  may  be  truly  said,  "  the  child  is 
father  of  the  man."  "  Shire,"  as  I  observed  just  now,* 
is  connected  with  "shear,"  "share,"  and  is  properly 
*  See  page  203. 


SHIEE   AND   COUNTY.  225 

a  portion  "  sheared"  or  "  shorn"  off.  "When  a  Saxon 
king  would  create  an  earl,  it!  did  not  lie  in  men's 
thoughts,  accustomed  as  they  then  were  to  deal  with 
realities,  that  such  could  be,  as  now  it  may,  a  merel} 
titular  creation,  or  could  exist  without  territoria 
jurisdiction ;  and  a  "  share"  or  "  shire"  was  assigned 
him  to  govern,  which  also  gave  him  his  title.  But 
at  the  Conquest  this  Saxon  officer  was  displaced  by 
a  Norman,  the  "  earl"  by  the  "  count" — this  title  of 
"  count,"  boiTowed  from  the  later  Roman  empire, 
meaning  originally  "  companion"  (comes),  one  who 
had  the  honor  of  being  closest  companion  to  his  lead- 
er ;  and  the  "  shire"  was  now  the  "  county"  (comi- 
tatus),  as  governed  by  this  "  comes."  In  that  sin- 
gular and  inexplicable  fortune  of  words,  which  causes 
some  to  disappear  and  die  out  under  circumstances 
most  favorable  for  life,  others  to  hold  their  ground 
when  all  seemed  against  them,  "  count"  has  disap- 
peared from  the  titles  of  English  nobility,  while 
"  earl"  has  recovered  its  place ;  although  in  evi- 
dence of  the  essential  identity  of  the  two  titles,  or 
offices  rather,  the  wife  of  the  earl  is  entitled  a  "  coun- 
tess ;"  and  in  further  memorial  of  these  great  changes 
that  so  long  ago  came  over  our  land,  the  two  names 
"  shire"  and  "  county"  equally  survive  as  household 
and  in  the  main  interchangeable  words  in  our  mouths. 

Let  us  a  little  consider,  in  conclusion,  how  we 
may  usefully  bring  our  etymologies  and  our  other 


226        THE  SCHOOLMASTER'S  USE  OF  WOEDS. 

notices  of  words  to  bear  on  the  religions  teaching 
which  we  would  impart  in  onr  schools.  To  do  this 
with  much  profit  we  must  often  deal  with  words  as 
the  queen  does  with  the  gold  and  silver  coin  of  the 
realm.  "When  this  has  been  current  long,  and  by 
much  use  and  often  passing  from  man  to  man,  with 
perhaps  occasional  clipping  in  dishonest  hands,  has 
quite  lost  the  clear  brightness,  the  well-defined  sharp- 
ness of  outline,  and  a  good  part  of  the  weight  and 
intrinsic  value  which  it  had  when  first  issued  from 
the  royal  mint,  it  is  the  sovereign's  prerogative  to  re- 
call it,  and  issue  it  anew,  with  her  image  stamped 
on  it  afresh,  bright,  and  sharp,  weighty  and  full  as 
at  first.  Now  to  a  process  such  as  this  the  true 
mint-masters  of  language  will  often  submit  the  words 
which  they  use ;  and  something  of  this  kind  we  all 
of  us  may  do.  Where  use  and  custom  have  worn 
away  the  significance  of  words,  we  too  may  recall 
and  issue  them  afresh.  And  this  has  been  the  case 
with  how  many;  for  example,  with  a  word  which 
will  be  often  in  your  mouths  —  the  "  lessons"  of  the 
day.  What  is  "  lessons"  here  for  most  of  us  but  a 
lazy  synonym  for  the  morning  and  evening  chapters 
appointed  to  be  read  in  church?  But  realize  the 
word  "  lessons,"  and  what  the  church  intended  in 
calling  these  chapters  by  this  name ;  namely,  that 
they  are  to  be  the  daily  instruction  of  her  children. 
Listen  to  them  as  such ;  address  yourselves  to  their 
explanation  in  the  spirit  of  this  word ;  make  your 


BIBLE  —  COLLECT.  227 

pupils  regard  them  in  this  light;  show  them  that, 
using  this  name  in  regard  of  them,  they  affirm  them 
to  be  such,  to  be  not  in  word  only  but  in  truth 
daily  "  lessons"  for  every  one. 

The  "Bible"  itself — with  no  irreverent  use  of  the 
word,  it  may  yet  be  no  more  to  us  than  the  sign  by 
which  we  designate  the  written  word  of  God.  But 
if  we  ask  ourselves  what  the  word  means,  and  know 
that  it  means  simply  "  the  book,"  so  that  there  was 
a  time  when  "  bible"  in  English  would  be  applied 
to  any  book  (in  Chaucer  it  is  so),  then  how  much 
matter  of  thought  and  reflection  is  here,  and  in  this 
our  present  restriction  of  the  word  to  one  book,  to 
the  exclusion  of  all  others.  So  prevailing,  that  is, 
has  been  the  sense  of  Holy  Scripture  being  the 
Book,  the  worthiest  and  best,  that  one  which  ex- 
plained all  other  books,  standing  up  in  their  midst 
— like  Joseph's  kingly  sheaf,  to  which  all  the  other 
sheaves  did  obeisance  —  that  this  name  of  "bible" 
or  "  book"  has  come  to  be  restricted  to  it  alone :  just 
as  "  scripture"  means  no  more  than  "  writing  ;"  but 
this  inspired  writing  has  been  felt  to  be  so  far  above 
all  other  writings,  that  this  name  also  it  has  chal- 
lenged as  exclusively  its  own. 

You  will  present,  I  think,  to  your  pupils  the  col- 
lects which  they  learn  from  Sunday  to  Sunday  under 
a  more  interesting  aspect,  when  you  have  taught 
them  that  they  probably  are  so  called  because  they 
"  collect,"  as  into  a  focus,  the  teaching  of  the  epistle 


THE   SCHOOLMASTEK7S    USE   OF   WORDS. 

and  gospel,  gathering  them  up  in  a  single  petition  ; 
and  from  this  you  may  profitably  exercise  them  in 
tracing  the  bond  of  relation  which  thus  will  be  found 
ever  to  exist  between  the  collect,  and  the  epistle  and 
gospel  which  follow  it.  "Who  again  will  not  be 
pleased  to  know  that  "  Whif'-Sunday  is  "  White" 
Sunday,  in  all  likelihood  so  called  because  of  the 
multitude  of  "  white"-robed  catechumens  that  used 
upon  this  day  of  the  pentecostal  gifts  to  be  presented 
at  the  font?  And  I  am  sure  there  is  much  to  be 
learned  from  knowing  that  the  "  surname,"  as  dis- 
tinguished from  the  Christian  name,  is  the  name 
over  and  above,  not  the  "  sire"-name,  or  name  re- 
ceived from  the  father,  but  "  sur"-name  (super  no- 
men) — that,  while  there  never  was  a  time  when 
every  baptized  man  had  not  a  Christian  name,  inas- 
much as  his  personality  before  God  was  recognised, 
yet  the  surname,  the  name  expressing  a  man's  rela- 
tion, not  to  the  kingdom  of  God,  but  to  the  worldly 
society  in  which  he  lives,  is  only  of  a  much  later 
growth,  an  addition  to  the  other,  as  the  word  itself 
declares.  And  what  a  lesson  at  once  in  the  up- 
growth of  human  society,  and  in  the  contrast  between 
it  and  the  heavenly  society,  might  be  appended  to 
this  explanation.  There  was  a  period  when  only  a 
few  had  surnames,  only  a  few,  that  is,  had  any  sig- 
nificance or  importance  in  the  order  of  things  tem- 
poral ;  while  the  Christian  name  from  the  first  was 
common  to  every  man.  Surely  this  may  be  brought 


REVELATION  —  ABSOLUTION.  229 

usefully  to  bear  on  your  exposition  of  the  first  words 
in  the  Catechism. 

And  then,  further,  in  regard  of  the  long  Latin 
words,  which,  with  all  our  desire  to  use  all  plainness 
of  speech,  we  yet  can  not  do  without,  nor  find  their 
adequate  substitutes  in  the  other  parts  of  ou?  lan- 
guage, but  which  must  remain  the  vehicles  of  so 
much  of  the  truth  by  which  we  live  —  in  explaining 
these,  make  it,  I  would  say,  your  rule  always  to 
start,  where  you  can,  from  the  derivation,  and  to  re- 
turn to  that  as  often  as  you  can.  Thus  you  have  be- 
fore you  the  word  "  revelation."  How  great  a  mat- 
ter, if4  you  can  attach  some  distinct  image  to  the 
word,  and  one  to  which  your  scholars,  as  often  as 
they  hear  the  word,  may  mentally  recur.  Nor  is 
this  impossible.  God's  revelation  of  himself  is  the 
drawing  back  of  the  veil  or  curtain  which  concealed 
him  from  men ;  not  man  finding  out  God,  but  God 
declaring  or  discovering  himself  to  man ;  all  which 
lies  plainly  in  the  word.  Or  you  have  the  word 
"  absolution :"  many  will  know  that  it  has  some- 
thing to  do  with  the  pardon  of  sins  ;  but  in  how 
much  more  lively  a  way,  to  say  the  least,  will  they 
know  this,  when  they  know  that  "  to  absolve"  means 
"  to  loosen  from :"  God's  "  absolution"  of  men  is  his 
releasing  of  them  from  the  bands  of  sin  with  which 
they  were  tied  and  bound.  Here  every  one  will 
connect  a  distinct  image  with  the  word,  one  that 
will  always  come  to  his  help  when  he  would  realize 


230        THE  SCHOOLMASTER'S  USE  OF  WORDS. 

what  its  actual  meaning  is.  That  which  was  done 
for  Lazarus  naturally,  the  Lord  saying  in  regard  of 
him,  "  Loose  him,  and  let  him  go,"  the  same  is  done 
spiritually  for  us,  when  we  receive  the  "  absolution" 
of  our  sins. 

Many  words  more  suggest  themselves  ;*  but  only 
one  more  I  will  bring  forward  ;  and  that  one  because 
.  we  shall  find  in  it  a  lesson  more  for  ourselves  than 
for  others,  and  it  is  with  such  a  one  I  would  fain 
bring  these  lectures  to  a  close.  How  important,  I  /- 
would  observe  then,  is  the  truth  which  we  express 

*  Several  of  the  following  I  had  marked  down,  while  sketching 
out  these  lectures,  with  the  intention  of  using  them  therein;  but 
from  lack  of  space,  or  from  one  cause  or  another,  have  not  employed 
them.  They  contain,  I  believe,  every  one  of  them,  in  their  deriva- 
tion or  their  use,  or  in  both,  something  that  will  make  it  worth  your 
pains  to  acquaint  yourselves  with  them ;  either  some  fact  of  history, 
some  custom  of  past  times,  some  truth  of  the  moral  or  spiritual 
•world,  some  lively  and  impressive  image,  or  other  noticeable  cir- 
cumstance about  them.  In  most  cases  Richardson's  dictionary,  the 
only  one  from  which  I  can  promise  you  effectual  help,  for  it  is  the 
only  English  one  in  which  etymology  assumes  the  dignity  of  a  sci- 
ence, will  put  you  in  the  right  position  for  judging  why  the  word 
has  been  suggested  to  you.  The  words,  to  which  many  as  good, 
some  no  doubt  still  better,  might  easily  be  added,  are  these :  absurd, 
affable,  anthem,  barbarous,  belief,  caricature,  civility,  civilization, 
clerk,  constable,  courtesy,  danger,  delirium,  devotion,  dispute,  enthu- 
siasm, fanatic,  feudal,  fortnight,  gazette,  generous,  genius,  gentle- 
man, gossip,  habit,  heresy,' history,  homage,  husbandry,  hypocrite, 
iniquity,  integrity,  intoxication,  knight,  legend,  maxim,  mercy,  mis- 
understanding, mountebank,  naughtiness,  novel,  obligation,  peers, 
physician,  politics,  precarious,  prerogative,  prodigy,  profane,  prose, 
rebellion,  recreant,  refinement,  reflection,  religion,  reprobate,  repu- 
tation, right,  romance,  salary,  sarcasm,  sedition,  sincere,  sophistry, 
speculation,  stationer,  superstition,  sycophant,  transgression,  uni- 
versity, urbane,  verse,  villany,  wassail,  worship. 


VOCATION,    CALLING.  231 

in  the  naming  of  our  work  in  this  world  our  "  voca- 
tion," or,  which  is  the  same  finding  utterance  in 
homelier  Anglo-Saxon,  our  "  calling."  What  a 
calming,  elevating,  solemnizing  view  of  the  tasks 
which  we  find  ourselves  set  in  this  world  to  do,  this 
word  would  give  us,  if  we  did  but  realize  it  to  the 
fall.  We  did  not  come  to  our  work  by  accident ;  we 
did  not  choose  it  for  ourselves  ;  but,  under  much 
which  may  wear  the  appearance  of  accident  and 
self-choosing,  came  to  it  by  God's  leading  and  ap- 
pointment. What  a  help  is  this  thought  to  enable 
us  to  appreciate  justly  the  dignity  of  our  work, 
though  it  were  far  humbler  work,  even  in  eyes  of 
men,  than  that  of  any  one  of  us  present !  What  an 
assistance  in  calming  unsettled  thoughts  and  desires, 
such  as  would  make  us  wish  to  be  something  else 
than  that  which  we  are !  What  a  source  of  confi- 
dence, when  we  are  tempted  to  lose  heart,  and  to 
doubt  whether  we  shall  be  able  to  carry  through  our 
work  with  any  blessing  or  profit  to  ourselves  or  to 
others  !  It  is  our  "  vocation,"  our  "  calling ;"  and 
He  who  "  called"  us  to  it,  will  fit  us  for  it,  and 
strengthen  us  in  it. 


*  •* 


INDEX   OF  WORDS. 


Absolution PAGE  229 

Allegiance 180 

Alligator 133 

Alms 149 

Ambition 212 

America 98,   111 

Amusement 219 

Analyze 200 

Anglia 115 

Animosity 43 

Ascendency 105 

Asia  Minor   Ill 

Assassin 86 

Assentator 60 

Assentation 50 

Assiduous  - 220 

Astonish    181 

Atonement   230 

Attention , 219 

Bayonet 98 

Beatitas,  beatitudo 128 

Benefice 174 

Bible 227 

Bigot 93 

Bishop 149 

Blackbird   106 

Board 77 

Bohemian  99 

Boor 41 

Brunt 202 

Burgeon 135 

Burk   141 

Caitiff 88 

Calamitas 101 

Calico 98 

Calculation 103 

Cambric    98 


Camelopard PAGE  132 

Camlet 98 

Canada 153 

Candidate 211 

Cannon 208 

Canon   208 

Canonical    208 

Carbunculus 154 

Cardinal 89 

Castus   215 

Catholic 110 

Caucus 153 

Cerf-volant 132 

Chaste 215 

Chrestus 57 

Christian 112 

Christology 147 

Christus 57 

Church 79 

Churl 41 

Cicerone 69 

Classics   213 

Club 70 

Cockle 218 

Collect 227 

Companion 215 

Conciliatrix 62 

Conscience 213 

Cord  wain   98 

Cosmos 112 

Count 225 

County 224 

Crafty 41 

Craven 89 

Curfew 102 

Currant 98 

Dabchick 218 

Damask 98 


234 


Days  of  "Week PAGE  106 

Delinquent 140 

Demure 41 

Denigreur 50 

Derivation 196 

Desultory    215 

Dilapidated 14 

Diligent 220 

Dinde  . . . , 99 

Disaster 105 

Discernment 191 

Discretion 191 

Distemper 103 

Diversion 18 

Dragonnade   137 

Dunce   90 

Duplicity 56 

Ecstacy 181 

Eleemosynary 149 

England 115 

Episcopal 149 

Essay 146 

Etonner 181 

Evangelize 144 

Fancy 200 

Favor 143 

Field 218 

Fortunate   . .  ,';^. 58 

Frank 20,  85 

Frugality 143 

Germany Ill 

Gloze 59 

Gnostic   96 

Guillotine 138 

Guilt   202 

Guinea 98 

Gypsy 99 

Habsburg , 222 

Haft 202 

Happiness 68 

Hawk 217 

Heathen 81 

Heaven 202 

Honnetete 69 

Huguenot   153 

Humility 45 


Humor,  humorous PAGE  103 

Hurricane 101 

Husband 54 

Idiot 65 

Imbecile   215 

Impotens 52 

Incivisme 138 

Indolence 220 

Indolentia 127 

Influence 105 

Innocent 57 

Insult 215 

Invidentia 127 

Invidia 127 

Italy 11C 

Jaherr 50 

Jehovah 100 

Journal 106 

Jove 100 

Jovial 104 

Jutland 100 

Karfunkel 151 

Kickshaws 154 

Kind 52 

Kingfisher 217 

Knave 41 

Left   203 

Lessons   226 

Letters 197 

Lewd 20 

Libertine 50 

Library   103 

Lierre 134 

London   223 

Loutre 134 

Love-child 61 

Loyalty 1 80 

Lunacy   107 

Luscinia 151 

Magnanimity    143 

Malapert 136 

Malevolentia 40 

Mammet   92 

Mankind  63 

Maudlin  . .  ,41 


IXDEX    OF   WOKDS. 


235 


Megrim    

PAGE    150 

Rationalist  

.  .PAGE    147 

Mercurial 

.  104 

Raven   

217 

Methodist 

181 

Razzia    

139 

Miscreant        . 

..     86 

230 

Miser.  

49 

46 

Mob  

140 

66 

27 

219 

Muslin                   . 

98 

Relent  

215 

Naturalist  

180 

Religion  

19 

215 

Neophyte  

144 

42 

Norman  

Ill 

Retaliation   

43 

180 

Retract                   .  .  . 

44 

Noyade   

.  .   138 

229 

Odd  

203 

Rivals       •  

216 

110 

.    .    101 

Rossio'uol  

151 

Owl  

218 

Roue    

137 

Pa^an  

81 

Roundhead  ........ 

153 

83 

Pain  

47 

Paper    .    .          .  . 

103 

Salvator  

121 

Paradise  

46 

Sardonic    . 

105 

51    Saturnine  

105 

.     18    Saunterer  

87 

Peace  

200 

Perfide          .    . 

....     65    Scandal      

144 

Pert  

136     Sc.hfulftnfrp.ude  

40 

Philosopher  

146 

108 

Scripture  

227 

Selfish 

144 

Picts    

100     Splf-siifficieiit,  — 

67 

176 

Servator        

121 

Plague  

48 

Sham  

140 

Plantation     . 

181 

Shamefastness  

101 

Plunder  

139 

Shire   

203 

Poids     

201 

Sierra  

15 

Pois  

201 

Silly  

......     56 

Poix  

201 

Simple  

55 

Poltroon  

87 

215 

Post  

205 

Slave  

21 

Posthumous  .... 

101 

Smith 

.    .      202 

Prejudice  

43 

Sobriety  

143 

Pretentious  

145 

Soliloauium  ...      . 

.  .    143 

Pri^e  

55 

Stipulation   

102 

Quarantine  

106 

Stock  

206 

Strong 

.  .  .   202 

68 

Subtle    

210 

Quick  

207 

Succinum 

161 

Rational  .  . 

.  144 

215 

Surname  .  . 

..101,  228 

236 


INDEX   OF   WORDS. 


SYNONYMS — 

Abdicate,  'desert  . . .  .PAGE  189 
Abhor,  detest^  hate,  loath  178 

Antic,  antique 175 

Apprehend,  comprehend  .   185 
Arrogant,     insolent,    pre- 
sumptuous    177 

Astrology,  astronomy. . . .  170 

Benefice,  benefit 174 

Blanch,  whiten 169 

Bloom,  blossom 176 

Charity,  love 169 

Cloak,  palliate 167 

Compulsion,  obligation ...  188 
Congratulate,  felicitate. ..  182 

Contrary,  opposite 186 

Courtesy,  curtsey 176 

Despair,  diffidence 170 

Divers,  diverse 175 

Discover,  invent 183 

Education,  instruction  ...  188 
Enthusiasm,  fanaticism ...  165 

Fancy,  imagination 164 

Gamble,  gambol 176 

Human,  humane 175 

Illegible,  unreadable  ....  169 
Ingenious,  ingenuous  ....  176 
Interference,  interposition  171 

Nave,  ship 169 

Nay,  no 172 

News,  noise 174 

Penna,  pinna 176 

Puerile,  boyish 169 

Revenge,  vengeance 165 

Yea,  yes 172 


Talent PAGE  62 

Tansy 150 

Tariff 92 

Tawdry 42 

Temper 103 

Temperance 143 

Timeserver 41 

Tinsel 41 

Topaz 105 

Tory 96 

Tour 145 

Tribulations 15 

Trinity 110 

Trivial 216 

Trump 173 

Tunic 144 

Turkey 99 

Tyrant .' Ill 

Urbanus 143 

Vaillant 135 

Verb 212 

Villain 41 

Virtuoso   68 

Virtus   69 

Vocation 231 

Whig 96 

Whitsunday   , 228 

Wife 54 

Wild 203 

Wrong 202 


Zigeuner 


99 


THE   END. 


J.  S.  REDFIELD, 

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"  We  have  here  the  most  charming  book  we  have  read  these  many  days,— so 
powerful  in  its  fascination  that  we  have  been  held  for  hours  from  our  imperious  labotk, 
or  needful  slumbers,  by  the  entrancing  influence  of  its  pages.  One  of  the  most  desiru 
ble  fruits  of  the  prolific  field  of  literature  of  the  present  season." — Portland  Eclectic. 

"  Two  brilliant  and  fascinating — we  had  almost  eaid,  bewitching—  volumes,  combi- 
ning information  and  amusement,  the  lightest  gossip,  with  solid  and  servireable  wis- 
dom."—  Yankee  Blade. 

"It  is  a  most  admirable  book,  full  of  originality,  wit,  information  and  philosophy 
Indeed,  the  vividness  of  the  book  is  extraordinary.  The  scenes  and  descriptions  are 
absolutely  life-like." — Southern  Literary  Gazette. 

"The  works  of  the  present  writer  are  the  only  ones  the  spirit  of  whr«e  rhetoric  does 
justice  to  those  times,  and  in  fascination  of  description  and  style  equal  the  fascinations 
they  descant  upon." — New  Orleans  Commercial  Bulletin. 

"  The  author  is  a  brilliant  writer,  and  serves  up  his  sketches  in  a  sparkling  manner." 
Christian  Freeman. 


ANCIENT  EGYPT  UNDER  THE  PHARAOHS. 
By  JOHN  KENDRICK,  M.  A.     In  2  vols.,  12mo,  price  $2.50. 

"  No  work  has  heretofore  appeared  suited  to  the  wants  of  the  historical  student, 
which  combined  the  labors  of  artists,  travellers,  interpreters  and  critics,  during  the 
periods  from  the  earliest  records  of  the  monarchy  to  its  final  absorption  in  the  empire 
of  Alexander.  This  work  supplies  this  deficiency." — Olive  Branch. 

"Not  only  the  geography  and  political  history  of  Egypt  under  the  Pharaohs  are 
given,  but  we  are  furnished  with  a  minute  account  of  the  domestic  manners  and  cus- 
toms of  the  inhabitants,  their  language,  laws,  science,  religion,  agriculture,  navigation 
and  commerce.'' —  Commercial  Advertiser. 

"  These  volumes  present  a  comprehensive  view  of  the  results  of  the  combined  labor* 
of  travellers,  artists,  and  scientific  explorers,  which  have  effected  so  much  during  the 
present  century  toward  the  development  of  Egyptian  archeology  and  history." — Jour- 
nal of  Commerce. 

"  The  descriptions  are  very  vivid  nnd  one  wanders,  delighted  with  the  author,  through 
the  land  of  Egypt,  gathering  at  every  step,  new  phases  of  her  wondrous  history,  and 
ends  with  a  more  intelligent  knowledge  than  he  ever  before  had,  of  the  land  of  the 
Pharaohs." — American  Spectator. 


COMPARATIVE  PHYSIOGNOMY; 

Or  Resemblances  between  Men  and  Animals.  By  J.  W.  REDFIEJUD, 
M.  D.  In  one  vol.,  8vo,  with  several  hundred  illustrations. 
price,  $2.00. 

"  Dr.  Redfield  has  produced  a  very  curious,  amusing,  and  instructive  hook,  curious 
in  its  originality  and  illustrations,  amusing  in  the  comparisons  and  analyses,  and  in. 
structive  because  it  contains  very  much  useful  information  on  a  too  much  neglected 
subject  It  will  be  eagerly  read  and  quickly  appreciated." — National  Mgis. 

"The  whole  work  exhibits  a  good  deal  of  scientific  research,  intelligent  observation, 
and  incenuity." — Daily  Union. 

"  Highly  entertaining  even  to  those  who  have  little  time  to  study  the  science." — 
Detroit  Daily  Advertiser. 

"  This  is  a  remarkable  volume  and  will  be  read  by  two  classes,  those  who  study  for 
information,  and  those  who  read  Jor  amusement.  For  its  originality  and  entertaining 
character,  we  commend  it  to  our  readers." — Albany  Express. 

"  It  is  overflowing  with  wit,  humor,  and  originality,  and  profusely  illustrated.  The 
whole  work  is  distinguished  by  vast  research  and  knowledge." — Knickerbocker. 

"  The  plan  is  a  novel  one ;  the  proofs  striking,  and  must  challenge  the  attention  of  ths 
curious," — Daily  Advertiser 


REDFIELD'S  NEW  AND  POPULAR  PUBLICATIONS. 


NOTES  AND  EMENDATIONS  OF  SHAKESPEARE. 

Notes  and  Emendations  to  the  Text  of  i  Shakespeare's  Plays,  from 
the  Early  Manuscript  Corrections  in  a  copy  of  the  folio  of  1632, 
in  the  possession  of  JOHN  PAYNE  COLLIER,  Esq.,  F.S.A.  Third 
edition,  with  a  fac-simile  of  the  Manuscript  Corrections.  1  vol. 
12mo,  cloth,  $1  50. 

"  It  is  not  for  a  moment  to  bo  doubted,  we  think,  that  in  this  volume  a  contribution 
has  been  made  to  the  clearness  and  accuracy  of  Shakespeare's  text,  by  far  the  mod  im- 
portant of  any  offered  or  attempted  since  Shakespeare  lived  and  wrote." — Land.  Exam. 

"  The  corrections  which  Mr.  Collier  has  here  given  to  the  world  are,  we  venture  to 
think,  of  more  value  than  the  labors  of  nearly  all  the  critics  on  Shakespeare's  text  put 
together." — London  Literary  Gazette. 

"  It  is  a  rare  aetn  in  the  history  of  literature,  and  can  not  fail  to  command  the  atten- 
tion of  all  the  amateurs  of  the  writings  of  the  immortal  dramatic  poet." — Ch'ston  Cour. 

"  It  is  a  book  absolutely  indispensable  to  every  admirer  of  Shakespeare  who  wishes 
to  read  him  understandingly." — Louisville  Courier. 

"  It  is  clear  from  internal  evidence,  that  for  the  most  part  they  are  genuine  restora- 
tions of  the  original  plays.  They  carry  conviction  with  them." — Home  Journal. 

"This  volume  is  an  almost  indispensable  companion  to  any  of  the  editions  of 
Shakespeare,  so  numerous  and  often  important  are  many  of  the  corrections."—  Register, 
Philadelphia. 


THE  HISTORY  OF  THE  CRUSADES. 

By  JOSEPH  FRANJOIS  MICHAUD.     Translated  by  W.  Robson,  3  vols. 
12mo.,  maps,  $3  75. 

"  It  is  comprehensive  and  accurate  in  the  detail  of  facts,  methodical  and  lucid  in  ar- 
rangement, with  a  lively  and  flowing  narrative." — Journal  of  Commerce. 

"  We  need  not  say  that  the  work  of  Michaud  has  superseded  all  other  histories 
of  the  Crusades.  This  history  has  long  been  the  standard  work  with  all  who  could 
read  it  in  its  original  language.  Another  work  on  the  same  subject  is  as  improbable 
as  a  new  history  of  the  'Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire.'" — Salem  Freeman. 

"  The  most  faithful  and  masterly  history  ever  written  of  the  wild  wars  for  the  Holy 
Land." — -Philadelphia  American  Courier. 

"  The  ability,  diligence,  and  faithfulness,  with  which  Michaud  has  executed  his 
great  task,  are  undisputed  ;  and  it  is  to  his  well-filled  volumes  that  the  historical  stu- 
dent must  now  resort  for  copious  and  authentic  facts,  and  luminous  views  respecting 
this  most  romantic  and  wonderful  period  in  the  annals  of  the  Old  World." — Boston 
Daily  Courier. 


MARMADUKE  WYVIL. 

An  Historical  Romance  of  1651,  by  HENRY  W.  HERBERT,  author 
of  the  "  Cavaliers  of  England,"  &c.,  &c.  Fourteenth  Edition. 
Revised  and  Corrected. 

"  This  is  one  of  the  best  works  of  the  kind  we  have  ever  read— full  of  thrilling  inci- 
dents and  ndventures  in  the  stirring  times  of  Cromwell,  and  in  that  style  which  has 
made  the  works  of  Mr.  Herbert  so  popular."—  Christian  Freeman,  Boston. 

"  The  work  is  distinguished  by  the  same  historical  knowledge,  thrilling  incident,  and 
pictorial  beauty  of  style,  which  have  characterized  all  Mr.  Herbert's  fictions  and  imparted 
to  them  such  a  bewitching  interest." — Yankee  Rlade. 

"  The  author  out  of  a  simple  plot  and  very  few  characters,  has  constructed  a  novel 
of  deep  interest  and  of  considerable  historical  value.  It  will  be  found  well  worth 
reading."— National  JEgis,  Worcester. 


*EDFIELD'S  NEW  AND  POPULAR  PUBLICATIONS. 

DIS CO  VER  Y  AND  EXPL ORA  TION 

Of  the  Mississippi  Valley.  With  the  Original  Narratives  of  Mar- 
quette,  Allouez,  Membr6,  Hennepin,  and  Anastase  Douay.  By 
JOHN  GILMARY  SHEA.  With  a  fac-simile  of  the  Original  Map 
of  Marquette.  1  vol.,  8vo, ;  Cloth.  Antique.  $2.00. 

"A  volume  of  great  and  curious  interest  to  all  concerned  to  know  the  early  history 
of  this  great  Western  land." — Cincinnati  Christian  Herald, 

"  We  believe  that  this  is  altogether  the  most  thorough  work  that  has  appeared  on  the 
•ubject  to  which  it  relates.  It  is  the  result  of  long-continued  and  diligent  research,  and 
no  legitimate  source  of  Information  haa  been  left  unexplored.  The  work  combines  the 
interest  of  romance  with  the  authenticity  of  history.1' — Puritan  Recorder. 

"  Mr.  Shea  has  rendered  a  service  to  the  cause  of  historical  literature  worthy  of  all 
praise  by  the  excellent  manner  in  which  he  has  prepared  this  important  publication  for 
the  press." — Boston  Traveller. 


NEWMAN\S  REGAL  ROME. 

A.n  Introduction  to  Roman  History.  By  FRANCIS  W.  NEWMAN, 
Professor  of  Latin  in  the  University  College,  London.  12mo, 
Cloth.  63  cents. 

"The  book,  though  small  in  compass,  is  evidently  the  work  of  great  research  and 
reflection,  and  is  a  valuable  acquisition  to  historical  literature." — Courier  and  Enquirer. 

"  A  •work  of  great  erudition  and  power,  vividly  reproducing  the  wonderful  era  of  Ro- 
man history  under  the  kings.  We  greet  it  as  a  work  _!'  profound  scholarship,  genial 
art,  and  eminent  interest — a  work  that  will  attract  the  scholar  and  please  the  general 
reader." — N.  Y.  Evangelist. 

"  Nearly  all  the  histories  in  the  schools  should  be  banished,  and  such  as  this  should 
take  their  places." — Boston  Journal. 

"  Professor  Newman's  work  will  be  found  full  of  interest,  from  the  light  it  throws  on 
the  formation  of  the  language,  the  races,  and  the  history,  of  ancient  Rome." — Watt- 
itreet  Journal. 


THE  CHEVALIERS  OF  FRANCE, 

From  the  Crusaders  to  the  Mareschals  of  Louis  XIV.  By  HE*RI 
W.  HERBERT,  author  of  "The  Cavaliers  of  England,"  "  Crom 
well,"  "The  Brothers,"  &c.,  &c.  1  vol.  12mo.  $1.25. 

•'  Mr.  Herbert  is  one  of  the  best  writers  of  historical  tales  and  legends  in  this  or  an; 
jther  country." — Christian  Freeman. 

"  This  is  a  work  of  great  power  ot  thought  and  vividness  of  picturing.  It  is  a  movun 
panorama  of  the  inner  life  of  the  French  empire  in  the  days  of  chivalry." — Albany  Spec 

"  The  series  of  works  by  this  author,  illustrative  of  the  romance  of  history,  is  deserv 
edly  popular.  They  serve,  indeed,  to  impart  and  impress  on  the  mind  a  great  deal  ot 
valuable  information  ;  for  the  facts  of  history  are  impartially  exhibited,  and  the  tictioL 
presents  a  vivid  picture  of  the  manners  and  sentiments  of  the  times." — Journal  of  Com 
mirce. 

"  The  work  contains  four  historical  tales  or  novelettes,  marked  by  that  vigor  of  styto 
and  beauty  of  description  which  have  found  so  many  admirers  among  the  readers  of 
the  author's  numerous  romanaes." — Lowell  Journal. 


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